Bandwidth efficient adaptive forward error correction mechanism with feedback channel

Multimedia content is very sensitive to packet loss and therefore multimedia streams are typically protected against packet loss, either by supporting retransmission requests or by adding redundant forward error correction (FEC) data. However, the redundant FEC information introduces significant additional bandwidth requirements, as compared to the bitrate of the original video stream. Especially on wireless and mobile networks, bandwidth availability is limited and variable. In this article, an adaptive FEC (A-FEC) system is presented whereby the redundancy rate is dynamically adjusted to the packet loss, based on feedback messages from the client. We present a statistical model of our A-FEC system and validate the proposed system under different packet loss conditions and loss probabilities. The experimental results show that 57-95% bandwidth gain can be achieved compared with a static FEC approach.