Enhanced LT decoding scheme in satellite communication

Traditional LT code abandons the corrupted packets that are contaminated by noise or interference, however, there are still a lot of correct bits in those corrupted packets. In this paper, we propose an enhanced decoding scheme which tries to make the best use of the corrupted packets. The proposed decoding scheme retains the traditional decoding procedure which deals with the correct packets, meanwhile, it introduces another procedure to dispose the corrupted ones, including the interaction between the correct and the corrupted packets. Recently, the application of LT code in satellite communication has attracted lots of interest, because the bad communication environment and large transmission delay make HARQ not so efficient as in terrestrial environment. Therefore, we investigate the performance of LT code with both decoding schemes in satellite communication, and make a comparison to HARQ. In order to exclude the effect of absolute transmission delay due to different orbit attitude, we introduce receiving efficiency to evaluate the receiving delay of different transmission schemes. As shown by simulation, by utilizing the corrupted packets, LT code could achieve better performance than HARQ. That makes LT code a formidable competitor in satellite communication.