A Multi-Burst Transmission Strategy for Streaming Over Blockage Channels with Long Feedback Delay

We consider streaming over a blockage channel with long feedback delay, as arises in, e.g., real-time satellite communication from a comm-on-the-move (COTM) terminal. For this problem, we introduce a definition of delay that captures the real-time nature of the problem, which we show grows at least as fast as O(log(k)) for memoryless channels, where k corresponds to the number of packets in the transmission. Moreover, a tradeoff exists between this delay and a natural notion of throughput we introduce to capture the bandwidth requirements of the communication. We develop and analyze an efficient "multi-burst" transmission (MBT) protocol for achieving good delay-throughput tradeoffs within this framework, which we show to be robust and near-optimal within the class of retransmission protocols with fixed schedules. The MBT protocol can be augmented with coding for additional performance gains. Simulations validate the new protocols, including when peak bandwidth and delay constraints are imposed.