Diversity Embedded Streaming Erasure Codes (DE-SCo): Constructions and Optimality

Abstract

Streaming erasure codes encode a source stream to guarantee that each source symbol is recovered within a fixed delay at the receiver over a burst-erasure channel. This paper introduces diversity embedded streaming erasure codes (DE-SCo), that provide a flexible tradeoff between the channel quality and receiver delay. When the channel conditions are good, the source stream is recovered with a low delay, whereas when the channel conditions are poor the source stream is still recovered, albeit with a larger delay. Information theoretic analysis of the underlying burst-erasure broadcast channel reveals that DE-SCo achieve the minimum possible delay for the weaker user, without sacrificing the performance of the stronger user. Our constructions are explicit, incur polynomial time encoding and decoding complexity and outperform random linear codes over bursty erasure channels.