Multipath Transmission with Forward Error Correction Mechanism for Delay-Sensitive Video Communications

The Concurrent Multipath Transmit with Forward Error Correction (CMT-FEC) mechanism uses multiple paths for data transfer and employs Forward Error Correction (FEC) to adapt to changing conditions in the wireless network. The CMT-FEC mechanism cannot be used in delay-sensitive video communications when the FEC block length is longer than the end-to-end delay because this will lead to the video frame not being playable on-time at the receiver end. This paper proposes the Delay-sensitive Multipath FEC (DM-FEC) mechanism using a mathematical analytical model to determine the appropriate transmission rate, FEC block length, and FEC redundancy on each path in a multipath environment. The DM-FEC mechanism does not cause the video frame to be unplayable or impede the timely recovery of video information.