Rateless coding for multicasting multimedia over wireless channels

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In recent years, the use of advanced communications devices has become pervasive. The wirelesstelecommunications sector plays a critical role in the Canadian economy, accounting for 25,000 jobs, over $9.5billion in revenue, and a $4.1 billion investment in infrastructure. In recent years, the number of wirelesssubscribers has increased at a compound annual growth rate exceeding 17% to reach 14.9 million whilerevenue has grown at a rate of 14% to reach $9.5 billion. Not only is the number of mobile phones surpassingthe number of wired phones, the functionalities of these mobile devices have multiplied to include thetransmission of still images, data, software applications and video. This has led to many positive societaldevelopments both in Canada and worldwide, including increased security, social interaction and the removalof other barriers from low-cost, accessible information distribution.For the above growth to continue, wireless communications networks need to undergo a significant redesign.While the underlying principles of telecommunications networking have traditionally involved layering asdeveloped for wire line systems, the plethora of mobile/handheld devices necessitates breakthroughs inspectral, energy and economic efficiency since these layered protocols can be extremely inefficient for small,low-power devices operating over wireless channels. The proposed project is concerned with the design ofcoding methods to enable efficient distribution of information to large numbers of futuristic mobile devices andnetwork topologies, including those involving relaying and cooperation. The aim is to support both data as wellas other media content. Relative to data, media in the form of audio and video can tolerate packet loss muchmore than transmission delay. This project proposes to investigate new transmission protocols enabled byadvances in rateless fountain codes to avoid the costly overhead associated with current retransmissionprotocols that reduce bandwidth and add to delay and traffic congestion.