Control messages delivery protocol

This paper describes a novel control messages delivery protocol (CMDP) that supports the reliable delivery of short control messages in a high delay and/or high error rate environment. It uses a hybrid FEC/ARQ mechanism to recover from damaged/lost messages. It dynamically adapts its FEC capabilities to the channel error rate. It's FEC mechanism automatically recovers damaged/lost messages before resorting to the ARQ mechanism. It's FEC mechanism minimizes the round trip delay by reducing the number of messages that need to be retransmitted using the ARQ mechanism.