Digital Fountain Announces Availability of Internationally Standardized DF Raptor Technology
Digital Fountain, the world’s preeminent supplier of FEC (forward error correction) technology for reliable communications, today announced the commercial availability of the DF Raptor(TM) R10 FEC, an advanced coding technology recently standardized for mobile multimedia streaming and file delivery over both cellular and broadcast wireless networks. The R10 FEC enables the creation of wired or wireless communications systems that deliver content with greater reliability and efficiency than previously possible.
“Digital Fountain has been at the forefront of error-correction technology since the company was founded,” said Charlie Oppenheimer, President and CEO of Digital Fountain. “Today we announce the availability of our most innovative type of DF Raptor FEC, internationally recognized as the new benchmark against which all FEC technologies are measured. The R10 FEC realizes reliable communications with less bandwidth overhead and less complexity than any alternative.”
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The DF Raptor R10 FEC
The DF Raptor R10 FEC is Digital Fountain’s newest DF Raptor technology, available now as highly optimized object-code software libraries to support sender and receiver functions for a variety of consumer, commercial, or military applications. DF Raptor FEC technology is a packet-level erasure-correcting fountain code that provides fundamental packet loss protection without requiring retransmission. DF Raptor technology can recover data packets that have been lost in transmission for any reason, including packet loss due to wireless interference, network congestion, excessive bit corruption, or sporadic receiver availability. The DF Raptor R10 FEC is a specific type of DF Raptor technology that has been optimized to offer robust packet loss protection yet incur minimal bandwidth overhead.
A Systematic Erasure-Correcting Fountain Code
The R10 FEC is a systematic code, meaning that the output of the encoder includes the original unencoded data. The R10 encoder processes a source block of data—for example, a complete data file to be transmitted or a segment of a continuous data stream—into a larger data block composed of the original source data and any desired amount of additional “repair” data. As a fountain code, any desired amount of repair data can be generated to support a broad range of network conditions.
At the receiver, not all of the data may be successfully received if there is packet loss along the transmission path. As long as the total amount of received source and repair data is slightly greater than the size of the original source data, however, the R10 decoder can completely recover the source data.
Additionally, because R10 is a systematic code, the receiver can make use of whatever source data has been successfully received even if packet loss levels are so severe that the R10 decoder is unable to completely recover the full source. For streaming applications, this allows a more graceful response to exceptionally high levels of packet loss.
A Component of Global Standards for Multimedia Content Delivery
The DF Raptor R10 FEC technology has been standardized by two of the world’s leading mobile communications industry forums to protect the delivery of content over wireless packet networks:
-- R10 has been adopted by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a component of streaming and file download services using the Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS) over 3G GSM/EDGE and WCDMA cellular networks
-- R10 has been adopted by the Digital Video Broadcast Project (DVB) as a component of file download services using IP datacasting (IPDC) over DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld) wireless networks
In these applications, the R10 FEC ensures that the point-to-multipoint transmission of multimedia content is delivered to end users efficiently, with the best possible quality, and without requiring a return channel.
Suitable for a Wide Range of Applications
The R10 FEC can be used in any communications system design where packet loss protection is desired. System designs using R10 can employ a fixed amount of packet loss protection and bandwidth overhead or can dynamically change the amount of bandwidth utilization to support varying packet loss conditions. The R10 FEC thus provides complete flexibility in balancing and optimizing a specific application’s requirements for bandwidth utilization, latency, and degree of packet loss protection. In addition, because the encoding and decoding algorithms employed by R10 have low complexity, the R10 FEC can be implemented as application-layer software hosted by high-capacity servers or by relatively low-power platforms such as used in consumer devices.
Clear Advantages to End Users, Network Operators, and System Developers
When used in streaming applications, the packet loss protection provided by R10 FEC technology permits a high-quality audio/video signal to be recovered in the presence of severe packet loss without retransmission. In file delivery applications, the R10 FEC’s fountain property allows error-free file delivery while minimizing the transmission time and network bandwidth needed.
For end users, R10 FEC technology ensures high-quality content delivery services. For network operators, R10 FEC technology can bolster profits by increasing service utilization, by decreasing subscriber churn through increased user satisfaction, and by reducing the costs associated with content delivery. Moreover, for wireless network operators, R10 FEC technology can expand the range of coverage without additional capital investment. Finally, for system developers, Digital Fountain’s optimized implementations of R10 FEC technology can accelerate time-to-market, reduce project risk, and ensure compliance with published standards.
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