Abstract
Many forward error correction (FEC) schemes have been proposed and have been shown to be effective in reducing cell loss rate in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks. But the focus of these has been on studying the impact of FEC on the access multiplexers, ignoring the consequences of passing the FEC protected streams through the generic cell rate algorithm (GCRA). In this paper, we examine this issue and show how the quality of the protected cell stream is affected when applied to GCRA. Drawing on this result, we propose two approaches to minimising the impact of the GCRA on FEC performance. The first approach aims at relating the FEC and GCRA parameters at the call set-up session. The second approach insures that the transmitted rate after FEC application is equivalent to the original rate using a
compress and add redundancy (CAAR) technique. We present simulation experiments with full-length Moving Picture Expert Group (MPEG) video traces to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. Our results show that the second approach is more efficient than the first approach as it avoids excessive cell loss at the GCRA and provides a performance FEC gain relative to non-FEC.