MBMS raptor codes design trade-offs for IPTV

Raptor codes bring significant improvement to the performance of the forward error correction (FEC) scheme for 3rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Services (MBMS). They have become an integrated part of the fast growing mobile consumer services and technologies - the multimedia content broadcast and delivery. In this work, we analyze the trade-offs involved in the implementation of systems employing MBMS. We show the performance for various packet erasure rates with fixed and variable Raptor code symbol overhead. We analyze the quality of service, for different block and symbol sizes and system throughputs. With the rise of new highly attractive but computationally intensive services, the lack of either the performance or the power in the mobile devices becomes a serious issue. We investigate the limiting effects of the Raptor decoder complexity on the performance of the mobile receiver system. Finally, we identify the system parameters that trade-off the Raptor coding performance for the decoding complexity.