On the performance of FEC for multicast communication on fading channel

Wireless channels are highly affected by unpredictable factors such as cochannel interference, adjacent channel interference, propagation path loss, shadowing and multipath fading. The unreliability of media degrades the transmission quality seriously. Forward Error Correction (FEC) schemes are frequently used in wireless environments to reduce the high bit error rate of the channel. We take a Gilbert-Elliot (GE) model to capture the error characteristics of a fading channel and we provide an analytical study of the performance of FEC for multicast communication. The obtained results are then compared to a Binary Symmetric Channel (BSC) model where errors are independent. Reed-Solomon erasure codes are used throughout this study because of their appropriate characteristics in terms of powerful coding and implementation simplicity.