Error-correcting codes for low latency streaming over multiple link relay networks

Abstract: This paper investigates the performance of streaming codes in low-latency applications over a multi-link three-node relayed network. The source wishes to transmit a sequence of messages to the destination through a relay. Each message must be reconstructed after a fixed decoding delay. The special case with one link connecting each node has been studied by Fong et. al [1], and a multi-hop multi-link setting has been studied by Domanovitz et. al [2]. The topology with three nodes and multiple links is studied in this paper. Each link is subject to a different number of erasures due to different channel conditions. An information-theoretic upper bound is derived, and an achievable scheme is presented. The proposed scheme judiciously allocates rates for each link based on the concept of delay spectrum. The achievable scheme is compared to two baseline schemes and the scheme proposed in [2]. Experimental results show that this scheme achieves higher rates than the other schemes, and can achieve the upper bound even in non-trivial scenarios. The scheme is further extended to handle different propagation delays in each link, something not previously considered in the literature. Simulations over statistical channels show that the proposed scheme can outperform the simpler baseline under practical models.