Vandermonde matrix packet-level FEC for joint recovery from errors and packet loss

Due to layer interactions, packets in cross layer protocol designs are impaired with both errors and packet loss, where the latter is also referred to as a packet erasure. In realtime applications, packet-level forward error correction (FEC) schemes are favorable candidates to enhance the performance of such protocols without retransmission. This paper proposes to use one type of code to recover from both impairments. In particular, the approach builds on recently introduced packet oriented systematic block codes in which parity matrix depends on the Vandermonde structure with shift operators. These codes are maximum distance separable (MDS) and have the advantage over other MDS codes of simple encoding/decoding processes. At the packet level, de-coupling of erasure recovery and the error correction processes is a challenging task, and this paper explores the advantages of packet-level product of two codes: one for erasure recovery and the other for error correction. Monte Carlo simulations show that the throughput of the proposed system improves when applying both error correction and erasure recovery compared to a system applying erasure-only recovery with equivalent overall minimum distance.