An assessment of maximum interleaving in Reed-Solomon coding for 3G broadcasting

1xEV-DO is the first wireless standard to support the delivery of broadcast and multicast services (BCMCS). Complementing unicast, which sends content to subscribers individually (e.g. video-on-demand), BCMCS transmits multimedia content from a single source to multiple users simultaneously. In BCMCS, Reed-Solomon coding is applied to the layers above the turbo code, and is particularly effective in correcting long bursts of errors. An additional block interleaving mechanism improves the performance of RS coding by converting the error bursts into a random pattern by increasing the width of the error control block (ECB) to increase the time diversity. We propose and evaluate a performance model of RS coding for varying conditions of Rayleigh fading on the broadcast channel with the maximum amount of block interleaving that the BCMCS specification allows. The fitness of the proposed performance model is verified by comparing the results from the analytic model with a simulation. Our evaluation will allow a service provider to exploit the most efficient RS code for their target service quality.