Interleaved FEC/ARQ coding for QoS multicast over the internet

The technology of real-time reliable multicast over a best-effort service network has become more popular recently. In this paper, a new technique is introduced that integrates word interleaving, forward error correction (FEC) and automatic repeat request (ARQ) to mitigate the error and loss effects encountered in wired and wireless Internet applications. For multicast video sessions spanning tens of routers, the integration of interleaving, FEC and ARQ as well as fine tuning of the various parameters of each mechanism will play a major role in the move towards successful deployment. In this work, the basic algorithms for integrated error control are first derived. Then the corresponding real-time implementations for an experimental testbed to achieve the practical performance of these techniques are completed. The performance of the scheme is analyzed, and laboratory results are compared with analytical results.