Optimal Broadcast Scheduling for Random-Loss Channels

Virtually all known results of broadcast scheduling have assumed that channels are reliable without data corruption or loss. This assumption, however, is far from reality. In fact, data loss imposes severe impact on broadcast performance, as briefly shown in [9]. In this paper, we study how to systematically derive optimal broadcast schedules for random-loss channels. The key idea is to employ proper MDS codes in the schedules. We show that the proposed scheme can achieve optimal performance, in terms of expected delivery time, and is much more robust to variations of channel loss probabilities, compared to those not using codes. In addition, we study the effect of basic schedule unit and conclude that the impact is prominent when data loss presents.