Concurrent multipath transmission with forward error correction mechanism to overcome burst packet losses for delay-sensitive video streaming in wireless home networks

Wireless multimedia home servers are the next generation of home entertainment systems. The provision of high quality time-critical video streaming applications in indoor environments is very challenging due to high attenuation and interference caused by the walls and the contention in the shared wireless channel. This paper proposes a Delay-sensitive Multipath Forward Error Correction (DM-FEC) mechanism involving an estimation of available bandwidth and a mathematical analytical model with which the appropriate transmission rate, the FEC block length, and the FEC redundancy on each path in a multipath environment can be determined to solve previous problems. The DM-FEC mechanism not only selects the appropriate transmission rate and FEC redundancy on each path but also adaptively adjusts the FEC block length and concurrently sends data over multiple paths to overcome burst packet losses which otherwise can cause the video frame to be unplayable and impede the timely recovery of video information.