Cross-layer design of LT codes and LDPC codes for satellite multimedia broadcast/multicast services

According to large coverage of satellites, there are various channel states in a satellite broadcasting network. In order to introduce an efficient rateless transmission method to satellite multimedia broadcasting/multicast services with finite-length packets, a cross-layer packet transmission method is proposed with Luby transform (LT) codes for efficiency in the network layer and low density parity check (LDPC) codes for reliability in the physical layer jointly. The codewords generated from an LT encoder are divided into finite-length packets, which are encoded by an LDPC encoder subsequently. Based on noise and fading effects of satellite channels, the LT packets received from an LDPC decoder either have no error or are marked as erased, which can be modeled as a binary erasure channels (BECs). By theoretical analysis on LT parameters and LDPC parameters, the relationships between LDPC code rates in the physical layer and LT codes word lengths in the network layer are investigated. With tradeoffs between the LT codes word lengths and the LDPC code rates, optimized cross-layer solutions are achieved with a binary search algorithm. Verified by simulations, the proposed solution for cross-layer parameters design can provide the best transmission mode according to satellite states, so as to improve throughput performance for satellite multimedia transmission.