Rate-adaptive error control for multimedia multicast services in satellite-terrestrial hybrid networks

This paper presents a rate-adaptive error control (RAEC) protocol for multimedia multicast services in satellite-terrestrial hybrid networks. The proposed scheme considers user fairness to a multicast group and adapts the code rate according to the channel conditions. In order to provide fairness perceived by user application, a packet is transmitted via satellite, while the retransmission of the packet is carried out over either terrestrial links or satellite link based on the number of negative acknowledgments of the packet. For code rate adaptation, a code is chosen adaptively based on the estimated channel condition. In the RAEC protocol, the transmitter uses a combination of forward and backward channel estimation. The throughput performance shows that the proposed RAEC protocol outperforms the static hybrid ARQ protocol under different channel conditions