An Error Control Scheme with Virtually Segmented Packets for Wireless Multicast Protocols

A new error control scheme is proposed for multicasting short messages over error-prone wireless networks. Data packets are virtually divided into small segments and each segment is appended with a 1-byte checksum. The segments are coded with forward error control (FEC) coding and decoded with erasure decoding. This limits error propagation to segments, which are an order shorter than packets. Simulations show significant performance improvement in wireless networks with medium to high error rates, and the effective data throughput increased by an order of magnitude. At low error rates the throughput is slightly reduced due to the overhead. The scheme is described in the framework of ACP 142 but can be applied to other multicast or unicast protocols, as long as the lower layers do not discard corrupted packets