With increasing computational capabilities and advances in robotics, technology is at the verge of the next industrial revolution. An growing number of tasks can be performed by artificial intelligence and agile robots. This impacts almost every part of the economy, including agriculture, transportation, industrial manufacturing and even social interactions. In all applications of automated machines, communication is a critical component to enable cooperation between machines and exchange of sensor and control signals. The mobility and scale at which these automated machines are deployed also challenges todays communication systems. These complex cyber-physical systems consisting of up to hundreds of mobile machines require highly reliable connectivity to operate safely and efficiently. Current automation systems use wired communication to guarantee low latency connectivity. But wired connections cannot be used to connect mobile robots and are also problematic to deploy at scale. Therefore, wireless connectivity is a necessity. On the other hand, it is subject to many external influences and cannot reach the same level of reliability as the wired communication systems. This thesis aims to address this problem by proposing methods to combine multiple unreliable wireless connections to a stable channel. The foundation for this work is Caterpillar Random Linear Network Coding (CRLNC), a new variant of network code designed to achieve low latency. CRLNC performs similar to block codes in recovery of lost packets, but with a significantly decreased latency. CRLNC with Feedback (CRLNC-FB) integrates a Selective-Repeat ARQ (SR-ARQ) to optimize the tradeoff between delay and throughput of reliable communication. The proposed protocol allows to slightly increase the overhead to reduce the packet delay at the receiver. With CRLNC, delay can be reduced by more than 50 % with only a 10 % reduction in throughput. Finally, CRLNC is combined with a statistical multipath scheduler to optimize the reliability and service availability in wireless network with multiple unreliable paths. This multipath CRLNC scheme improves the reliability of a fixed-rate packet stream by 10 % in a system model based on real-world measurements of LTE and WiFi. All the proposed protocols have been implemented in the software library NCKernel. With NCKernel, these protocols could be evaluated in simulated and emulated networks, and were also deployed in several real-world testbeds and demonstrators.:Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 6 1 Introduction 7 1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.2 Use Cases and Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.3 Opportunities of Multipath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 1.4 Contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2 State of the Art of Multipath Communication 19 2.1 Physical Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.2 Data Link Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2.3 Network Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.4 Transport Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.5 Application Layer and Session Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.6 Research Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3 NCKernel: Network Coding Protocol Framework 27 3.1 Theory that matters! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.2 Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3.3 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3.3.1 Socket Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3.3.2 En-/Re-/Decoder API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.3.3 Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.3.4 Timers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.3.5 Tracing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 3.4 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 3.5 Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4 Low-Latency Network Coding 35 4.1 Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 4.2 Random Linear Network Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 4.3 Low Latency Network Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 4.4 CRLNC: Caterpillar Random Linear Network Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 4.4.1 Encoding and Packet Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 4.4.2 Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 4.4.3 Computational Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 4.5 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 4.5.1 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 4.5.2 Simulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 4.5.3 Packet Loss Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4.5.4 Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 4.5.5 Window Size Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 5 Delay-Throughput Tradeoff 55 5.1 Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 5.2 Network Coding with ARQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 5.3 CRLNC-FB: CRLNC with Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 5.3.1 Encoding and Packet Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 5.3.2 Decoding and Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 5.3.3 Retransmissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 5.4 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 5.4.1 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 5.4.2 Simulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 5.4.3 Systematic Retransmissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 5.4.4 Coded Packet Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 5.4.5 Comparison with other Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 5.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 6 Multipath for Reliable Low-Latency Packet Streams 73 6.1 Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 6.2 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 6.3 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 6.3.1 Traffic Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 6.3.2 Network Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 6.3.3 Channel Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 6.3.4 Reliability Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 6.4 Multipath CRLNC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 6.4.1 Window Size for Heterogeneous Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 6.4.2 Packet Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.5 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.5.1 Simulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.5.2 Preliminary Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 6.5.3 Simulation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 6.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 7 Conclusion 94 7.1 Results and Contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 7.2 Future Research Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Acronyms 99 Publications 101 Bibliography 103

L’un des défis majeurs dans la convergence des réseaux et des services vers la technologie IP est le maintien de la qualité de service (QoS) des flux audio/vidéo transmis sur des réseaux sans fil pour des utilisateurs mobiles et hétérogènes. Dans cet environnement, les services multimédia doivent faire face à plusieurs inconvénients engendrés par le manque de fiabilité d’un canal sans fil et son partage par plusieurs utilisateurs. Ces inconvénients sont accentués par l’hétérogénéité des terminaux de réception (capacité de décodage, espace de stockage, résolution d’affichage, etc.) qui doivent recevoir, décoder et afficher les flux multimédia. Afin d’assurer un accès universel aux services n’ importe où, n’importe quand et en utilisant n’importe quel terminal d’accès, les applications multimédia de nouvelle génération doivent interagir avec leur environnement pour, d’une part, informer les réseaux sous-jacents de leur besoins en QoS, et d’autre part, adapter dynamiquement leurs services en fonction des terminaux de réception et des variations intempestives des conditions de transmission. Dans ce contexte, nous proposons un nouveau système pour la transmission des flux audio/vidéo sur les réseaux 802.11 basé sur l’approche Cross-layer. Ce nouveau système, appelé XLAVS (Cross Layer Adaptive Video Streaming), communique activement avec l’ensemble des couches réseaux ainsi que le récepteur final pour déterminer l’adaptation optimale qui permet d’optimiser la QoS des flux audio/vidéo. Nos contributions se focalisent principalement sur les adaptations Cross-layer mises en œuvre par le XLAVS. Ces contributions sont organisées en deux grandes catégories : les adaptations ascendantes exécutées au niveau applicatif et les adaptations descendantes exécutées au niveau MAC 802.11. Dans la première catégorie, notre apport s’articule au tour de : (1) l’adaptation dynamique du débit vidéo en fonction du débit physique disponible dans le réseau 802.11 et (2) l’adaptation conjointe du taux de redondance FEC et du débit vidéo contrôlée par la puissance du signal et les taux de perte. Dans la deuxième catégorie, nous proposons deux mécanismes Cross-layer au niveau MAC 802.11 : (1) une fragmentation 802.11 adaptative pour trouver un compromis entre les pertes de paquets et l’overhead introduit par les couches 802.11 et (2) un groupage des images vidéo au niveau MAC pour permettre au flux vidéo d’avoir un accès au canal 802.11 proportionnel à son débit. / One of the big challenges in the convergence of networks and services to the IP technology is to maintain the Quality of service (QoS) for audio/video streams transmitted over wireless networks to heterogeneous mobiles users. In this environment, the multimedia services should face many shortcomings caused mainly by the wireless channel unreliability and its sharing among many users. These shortcomings are increased by the terminals heterogeneity (i.e. decoding capability, memory storage, display resolution, etc.) which should receive, decode and display the multimedia streams. In order to allow universal access to multimedia services anywhere, anytime and using any kind of terminal, the new generation of multimedia applications have to interact with their environment, on the one hand, to inform the underling network about their need in term of QoS, and on the other hand, to dynamically adapt their services according to the receiver terminal and the changing in network conditions. In this context, we have proposed a new Cross-layer based streaming system to transmit audio/video streams over 802.11 networks. This new system, called XLAVS (Cross layer Adaptive video streaming), actively communicates with all network layers and the end receiver to determine the optimal adaptation that optimize the QoS of audio/video streams. Our contributions focus mainly on the Cross-layer adaptations implemented on the XLAVS. These contributions are classified into two major categories: the bottom-up adaptations performed at the application level and the top-down adaptations performed at the 802.11 MAC level. In the first category, our proposals have revolved around: (1) a dynamic adaptation of video throughput according to the physical rate available in the 802.11 network and (2) a join FEC and video throughput adaptation steered by the signal strength and the loss ratio. In the second category, we have proposed two Cross-layer mechanisms at the 802.11 MAC level: (1) an adaptive 802.11 MAC fragmentation to find an optimal trade-off between the packet loss and the overhead introduced by the MAC layer and (2) a video frame grouping at MAC level that allows video stream to get access to the 802.11 channel proportionally to its throughput.

Les travaux de thèse présentés dans ce manuscrit portent sur l’étude d’électrodes de silicium, matériau prometteur pour remplacer le graphite en tant que matériau actif d’électrode négative pour accumulateur Li-ion. Les mécanismes de (dé)lithiation du silicium sont d’abord étudiés, par Spectroscopie des Electrons Auger (AES). En utilisant cette technique de caractérisation de surface, qui permet d’analyser les particules individuellement dans leur environnement d’électrode, nos résultats montrent que la première lithiation du silicium s’effectue selon un mécanisme biphasé cr-Si / a-Li3,1Si tandis que les processus de (dé)lithiation suivants apparaissent complètement différents et sont du type solution solide. Ces mécanismes d’insertion / désinsertion du lithium conduisent à des variations volumiques importantes des particules de matériau actif lors du cyclage, à l’origine d’une détérioration rapide des performances électrochimiques. En combinant plusieurs techniques de caractérisation, les mécanismes de dégradation d’une électrode de silicium sont étudiés au cours du vieillissement. En utilisant en particulier la spectroscopie d’impédance électrochimique et des analyses par porosimétrie mercure, une véritable dynamique de la porosité de l’électrode est mise en évidence lors du cyclage. Un modèle de dégradation, mettant en cause principalement l’instabilité de la Solid Electrolyte Interphase (SEI) à la surface des particules de silicium, est proposé. Pour tenter de stabiliser cette couche de passivation et ainsi améliorer les performances électrochimiques des électrodes de silicium, l’influence de deux paramètres est étudiée : l’électrolyte et le « domaine de lithiation » du silicium, ce dernier paramètre étant associé à l’évolution de la composition du matériau actif lors du cyclage. A l’issue de ces travaux, des performances prometteuses sont obtenues pour des accumulateurs Li-ion comprenant une électrode de silicium. / The work presented here focuses on electrodes made of silicon, a promising material to replace graphite as an anode active material for Li-ion Batteries (LIBs). The first part of the manuscript is dedicated to the study of silicon (de)lithiation mechanisms by Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES). By using this technique of surface characterization, which allows investigating individual particles in their electrode environment, our results show that the first silicon lithiation occurs through a two-phase region mechanism cr-Si / a-Li3,1Si, whereas the following (de)lithiation steps are solid solution type process. Upon (de)alloying with lithium, silicon particles undergo huge volume variations leading to a quick capacity fading. By combining several techniques of characterization, the failure mechanisms of a silicon electrode are studied during aging. In particular, by using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and mercury porosimetry analyses, an impressive dynamic upon cycling of the electrode porosity is shown. A model, which mainly attributes the capacity fading to the Solid Electrolyte Interphase instability at the silicon particles surface, is proposed. To try to stabilize this passivation layer and thus improve silicon electrodes electrochemical performances, the influence of two parameters is studied: the electrolyte and the “lithiation domain” of silicon; the latter is associated with the evolution of the active material composition upon cycling. Finally, by using these last results, promising performances are obtained for silicon electrode containing LIBs.

ITC/USA 2006 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Second Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 23-26, 2006 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / This paper presents a practical implementation of a hardware design for transmission of data over aircraft power lines. The intent of such hardware is to significantly reduce the wiring in the aircraft instrumentation system. The potential usages of this technology include pulse code modulation (PCM), Ethernet and other forms data communications. Details of the fieldprogrammable gate array (FPGA) and printed circuit board (PCB) designs of the digital and analog front end will be discussed. The power line is not designed for data transmission. It contains considerable noise, multipath effects, and time varying impedance. Spectral analysis data of an aircraft is presented to indicate the difficulty of the problem at hand. A robust modulation is required to overcome the harsh environment and to provide reliable transmission. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been used in power line communication industry with a great deal of success. OFDM has been deemed the most appropriate technology for high-speed data transmission on aircraft power lines. Additionally, forward error correction (FEC) techniques are discussed.

ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Hardware implementing forward error correction (FEC) is currently available for utilization by the airborne telemetry system designer. This paper will discuss the potential benefits along with drawbacks when using this technology. Laboratory testing is supplemented with real-world flight testing. Performance results comparing FEC and non-FEC systems are presented for both IRIG-106 Pulse Code Modulation/Frequency Modulation, PCM/FM, (or Continuous Phase Frequency Shift Keying, CPFSK, with filtering, or ARTM Tier 0) and Shaped Offset Quadrature Phase Shift Keying, Telemetry Group version (SOQPSK-TG or ARTM Tier I) waveforms.

ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper describes a telemetry system developed for the EA-18G Flight Test program. The program requires transmission of a number of data streams, in IRIG-106 Chapter 4 PCM, Chapter 8 Mux-All 1553, Ethernet, and Fibre Channel formats. The initial requested data rate was in excess of 30 Mbits/sec. The telemetry system must operate at a range up to about 120 miles, at several test ranges, and with several different aircraft maneuvering configurations. To achieve these requirements, the Flight Test Instrumentation group at Boeing Integrated Defense Systems in Saint Louis, developed a telemetry system in conjunction with industry partners and test range customers. The system transmits two telemetry streams with a total aggregate rate on the order of 20 Mbits/sec. Each telemetry stream consists of up to four PCM streams, combined in a Teletronics Technology Corporation (TTC) Miniature Adaptable Real-Time Multiplexer Unit (MARM) data combiner. It uses Nova Engineering multi-mode transmitters capable of transmitting PCM-FM or Shaped Offset Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (SOQPSK). The transmitter also provides Turbo-Product Code (TPC) Forward Error Correction (FEC) to enhance range and improve link performance. Data collection units purchased from outside vendors or developed by Saint Louis Flight Test Instrumentation, translate Ethernet and Fibre Channel information into traditional PCM streams. A Boeing Flight Test Instrumentation developed control system provides flexible selection of streams to be combined into each telemetry stream, and functional control of antenna selection and transmitter operation.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Bit error rate (BER) and bandwidth efficiency of several variations of enhanced Feher patented quadrature phase shift keying (FQPSK) [1] are described. An enhanced FQPSK increases the channel packing density of that of the IRIG 106-00 standardized FQPSK-B by approximately 50% in adjacent channel interference (ACI) environment. As the bandwidth efficiency of FQPSK-B DOUBLES (2×) that of pulse code modulation/Frequency modulation (PCM/FM) [5], the enhanced FQPSK, with a simpler transceiver than FQPSK-B, has a channel packing density of TRIPLE (3×) that of PCM/FM. One of the other enhanced FQPSK prototypes has an end to end system loss of only 0.4 dB at BER=1x10^(-3) and 0.5 dB at BER=1x10^(-4) from ideal linearly amplified QPSK theory. The enhanced FQPSK has a simple architecture, thus is inexpensive and has small size, for ultra high bit rate implementation. With low redundancy forward error correction (FEC) coding which expands the spectrum by approximately 10%, further improvement of about 3-4.5dB E N b o is attained with NLA FQPSK-B and enhanced FQPSK at BER=1x10^(-5) .

Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The telecommunications link between a LEO satellite and a rural ground station with a non-tracking antenna, has a strongly varying link quality and a short communications window. The satellite acts as a store-and-forward node between ground stations. The TC-SDLP and an FTP protocol form a shallow protocol stack, which excludes unneeded protocol functionality and the resulting overhead. Coding gain, introduced by BCH FEC in the TCSDLP, allows for link quality improvement. The core of this thesis is an improvement of the TC-SDLP to maximise effective payload data throughput, or goodput. This improvement was achieved by creating an optimal segment length selection metric based on the BER. Since the BER is not determinable from within the TC-SDLP, the metric was twice determined; once based on the FER and finally based on time delays. The work includes an extensive background study, which consists of space standardisation, orbital physics, error detection and correction, space datalink protocols, data throughput and culminating in the protocol stack design. The project specific link budget calculation is presented. The optimal segment length policy was mathematically determined. Asimulation model of the TC-SDLP was used as a proof of concept for the effective throughput and give a performance benchmark. Finally a TC-SDLP implementation offers a real world performance demonstration. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die telekommunikasie skakel tussen ’n lae aardomwenteling (LEO) sateliet en ’n plattelandse grondstasie met ’n nie-volg antenna, het ’n skakelkwaliteit wat in ’n groot mate varieer en ’n kort kommunikasievenster. Die sateliet tree op as ’n stoor- en- aanstuur node tussen grondstasies. Die TC-SDLP en ’n leêr oordrag protokol (FTP) vorm ’n vlak protokol stapel, wat onnodige protokol funksionaliteit en die gevolglike opkoste uitsluit. Kode aanwins, wat deur die BCH FEC in die TC-SDLP, aangebring word, verbeter die skakelkwaliteit. Die kern van hierdie tesis is ’n verbetering van die TC-SDLP om sodoende die ware deurvoer van nuttige vragdata te maksimimeer. Hierdie verbetering is bereik deur die skep van ’n optimale segmentlengte-seleksie metode gebaseer of die bit fout tempo (BER). Aangesien die BER nie bepaal kan word vanuit die TC-SDLP nie, is die maatstaf twee keer bepaal; die eerste keer is die bepaling gebaseer op die raamwerk fout tempo (FER) en die finale bepaling op tyd vertragings. Die tesis sluit ’n omvattende agtergrondstudie in, wat bestaan uit ruimte standardisering, wentelbaan fisika, die opspoor en regstel van foute, ruimte inligtingskakel protokol en deurstuur van data wat uitloop op die protokol ontwerp. Daar word aangedui hoe die berekening van die begroting vir die skakel van toepassing op die spesifieke projek, gedoen is. ’n Wiskundige analise van die optimale segmentlengte s ook gedoen. ’n Simulasie model van die TC-SDLP is gebruik as ’n bewys van die konsep vir die ware deurset en gee ’n prestasie maatstaf. Laastens bied die TCSDLP implementering ’n ware wereld prestasie demonstrasie.

This thesis proposes a complete framework of an end-to-end transmission of stereo video to mobile devices using DVB-H. Block diagram of the system is presented and operations conducted on the video at each layer are explained. Parameters and methodologies that may make a robust transmission possible are discussed. The transmission performance is analyzed in terms of error robustness under various coding methods, prediction structures, layering and protection strategies for different contents and channel conditions. It also investigates the effect of rate allocation between video quality and protection over robust transmission in erroneous environment. This works provides directive conclusions on the selection of the mentioned parameters and methods.

ITC/USA 2014 Conference Proceedings / The Fiftieth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 20-23, 2014 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA / In some flight test scenarios the telemetry link is noise limited at long slant ranges or during signal fade events caused by antenna pattern nulls. In these situations, a mitigation technique such as forward error correction (FEC) can add several decibels to the link margin. The particular FEC code discussed in this paper is a variant of a low-density parity check (LDPC) code and is coupled with SOQPSK modulation in the hardware tested. This paper will briefly cover lab testing of the flight-ready hardware then present flight test results comparing a baseline uncoded telemetry link with a LDPC-coded telemetry link. This is the first known test dedicated to this specific FEC code in a real-world test environment with flight profile tailored to assess the viability of an LDPC-coded telemetry link.