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2 FecFrame V. Roca
3 Internet-Draft INRIA
4 Intended status: Standards Track M. Cunche
5 Expires: April 7, 2013 INSA-Lyon/INRIA
6 J. Lacan
7 ISAE, Univ. of Toulouse
8 October 4, 2012
10 Simple LDPC-Staircase Forward Error Correction (FEC) Scheme for FECFRAME
11 draft-ietf-fecframe-ldpc-03
13 Abstract
15 This document describes a fully-specified simple FEC scheme for LDPC-
16 Staircase codes that can be used to protect media streams along the
17 lines defined by the FECFRAME framework. These codes have many
18 interesting properties: they are systematic codes, they perform close
19 to ideal codes in many use-cases and they also feature very high
20 encoding and decoding throughputs. LDPC-Staircase codes are
21 therefore a good solution to protect a single high bitrate source
22 flow, or to protect globally several mid-rate flows within a single
23 FECFRAME instance. They are also a good solution whenever the
24 processing load of a software encoder or decoder must be kept to a
25 minimum.
27 Status of this Memo
29 This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
30 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
32 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
33 Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
34 working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
35 Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
37 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
38 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
39 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
40 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
42 This Internet-Draft will expire on April 7, 2013.
44 Copyright Notice
46 Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
47 document authors. All rights reserved.
49 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
50 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
51 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
52 publication of this document. Please review these documents
53 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
54 to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
55 include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
56 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
57 described in the Simplified BSD License.
59 Table of Contents
61 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
62 2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
63 3. Definitions Notations and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . 4
64 3.1. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
65 3.2. Notations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
66 3.3. Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
67 4. Common Procedures Related to the ADU Block and Source
68 Block Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
69 4.1. Restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
70 4.2. ADU Block Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
71 4.3. Source Block Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
72 5. LDPC-Staircase FEC Scheme for Arbitrary ADU Flows . . . . . . 10
73 5.1. Formats and Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
74 5.1.1. FEC Framework Configuration Information . . . . . . . 10
75 5.1.2. Explicit Source FEC Payload ID . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
76 5.1.3. Repair FEC Payload ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
77 5.2. Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
78 5.3. FEC Code Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
79 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
80 6.1. Attacks Against the Data Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
81 6.1.1. Access to Confidential Content . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
82 6.1.2. Content Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
83 6.2. Attacks Against the FEC Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
84 6.3. When Several Source Flows are to be Protected Together . . 16
85 6.4. Baseline Secure FEC Framework Operation . . . . . . . . . 16
86 7. Operations and Management Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . 16
87 7.1. Operational Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
88 8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
89 9. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
90 10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
91 10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
92 10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
93 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
95 1. Introduction
97 The use of Forward Error Correction (FEC) codes is a classic solution
98 to improve the reliability of unicast, multicast and broadcast
99 Content Delivery Protocols (CDP) and applications [RFC3453]. The
100 [RFC6363] document describes a generic framework to use FEC schemes
101 with media delivery applications, and for instance with real-time
102 streaming media applications based on the RTP real-time protocol.
103 Similarly the [RFC5052] document describes a generic framework to use
104 FEC schemes with objects (e.g., files) delivery applications based on
105 the ALC [RFC5775] and NORM [RFC5740] reliable multicast transport
106 protocols.
108 More specifically, the [RFC5053] (Raptor) and [RFC5170] (LDPC-
109 Staircase and LDPC-Triangle) FEC schemes introduce erasure codes
110 based on sparse parity check matrices for object delivery protocols
111 like ALC and NORM. Similarly, the [RFC5510] document introduces
112 Reed-Solomon codes based on Vandermonde matrices for the same object
113 delivery protocols. All these codes are systematic codes, meaning
114 that the k source symbols are part of the n encoding symbols.
115 Additionally, the Reed-Solomon FEC codes belong to the class of
116 Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) codes that are optimal in terms of
117 erasure recovery capabilities. It means that a receiver can recover
118 the k source symbols from any set of exactly k encoding symbols out
119 of n. This is not the case with either Raptor or LDPC-Staircase
120 codes, and these codes require a certain number of encoding symbols
121 in excess to k. However, this number is small in practice when an
122 appropriate decoding scheme is used at the receiver [Cunche08].
123 Another key difference is the high encoding/decoding complexity of
124 Reed-Solomon codecs compared to Raptor or LDPC-Staircase codes. A
125 difference of one or more orders of magnitude or more in terms of
126 encoding/decoding speed exists between the Reed-Solomon and LDPC-
127 Staircase software codecs [Cunche08][CunchePHD10]. Finally, Raptor
128 and LDPC-Staircase codes are large block FEC codes, in the sense of
129 [RFC3453], since they can efficiently deal with a large number of
130 source symbols.
132 The present document focuses on LDPC-Staircase codes, that belong to
133 the well-known class of "Low Density Parity Check" codes. Because of
134 their key features, these codes are a good solution in many
135 situations, as detailed in Section 7.
137 This documents inherits from [RFC5170] the specifications of the core
138 LDPC-Staircase codes. Therefore this document specifies only the
139 information specific to the FECFRAME context and refers to [RFC5170]
140 for the core specifications of the codes. To that purpose, the
141 present document introduces:
143 o the Fully-Specified FEC Scheme with FEC Encoding ID XXX that
144 specifies a simple way of using LDPC-Staircase codes in order to
145 protect arbitrary ADU flows.
147 Finally, publicly available reference implementations of these codes
148 are available [LDPC-codec] [LDPC-codec-OpenFEC].
150 2. Terminology
152 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
153 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
154 document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
156 3. Definitions Notations and Abbreviations
158 3.1. Definitions
160 This document uses the following terms and definitions. Some of them
161 are FEC scheme specific and are in line with [RFC5052]:
162 Source symbol: unit of data used during the encoding process. In
163 this specification, there is always one source symbol per ADU.
164 Encoding symbol: unit of data generated by the encoding process.
165 With systematic codes, source symbols are part of the encoding
166 symbols.
167 Repair symbol: encoding symbol that is not a source symbol.
168 Code rate: the k/n ratio, i.e., the ratio between the number of
169 source symbols and the number of encoding symbols. By definition,
170 the code rate is such that: 0 < code rate <= 1. A code rate close
171 to 1 indicates that a small number of repair symbols have been
172 produced during the encoding process.
173 Systematic code: FEC code in which the source symbols are part of
174 the encoding symbols. The LDPC-Staircase codes introduced in this
175 document are systematic.
176 Source block: a block of k source symbols that are considered
177 together for the encoding.
178 Packet Erasure Channel: a communication path where packets are
179 either dropped (e.g., by a congested router, or because the number
180 of transmission errors exceeds the correction capabilities of the
181 physical layer codes) or received. When a packet is received, it
182 is assumed that this packet is not corrupted.
184 Some of them are FECFRAME framework specific and are in line with
185 [RFC6363]:
187 Application Data Unit (ADU): The unit of source data provided as
188 payload to the transport layer. Depending on the use-case, an ADU
189 may use an RTP encapsulation.
190 (Source) ADU Flow: A sequence of ADUs associated with a transport-
191 layer flow identifier (such as the standard 5-tuple {Source IP
192 address, source port, destination IP address, destination port,
193 transport protocol}). Depending on the use-case, several ADU
194 flows may be protected together by the FECFRAME framework.
195 ADU Block: a set of ADUs that are considered together by the
196 FECFRAME instance for the purpose of the FEC scheme. Along with
197 the F[], L[], and Pad[] fields, they form the set of source
198 symbols over which FEC encoding will be performed.
199 ADU Information (ADUI): a unit of data constituted by the ADU and
200 the associated Flow ID, Length and Padding fields (Section 4.3).
201 This is the unit of data that is used as source symbol.
202 FEC Framework Configuration Information: Information which controls
203 the operation of the FEC Framework. The FFCI enables the
204 synchronization of the FECFRAME sender and receiver instances.
205 FEC Source Packet: At a sender (respectively, at a receiver) a
206 payload submitted to (respectively, received from) the transport
207 protocol containing an ADU along with an optional Explicit Source
208 FEC Payload ID.
209 FEC Repair Packet: At a sender (respectively, at a receiver) a
210 payload submitted to (respectively, received from) the transport
211 protocol containing one repair symbol along with a Repair FEC
212 Payload ID and possibly an RTP header.
214 The above terminology is illustrated in Figure 1 (sender's point of
215 view):
217 +----------------------+
218 | Application |
219 +----------------------+
220 |
221 | (1) Application Data Units (ADUs)
222 |
223 v
224 +----------------------+ +----------------+
225 | FEC Framework | | |
226 | |-------------------------->| FEC Scheme |
227 |(2) Construct source |(3) Source Block | |
228 | blocks | |(4) FEC Encoding|
229 |(6) Construct FEC |<--------------------------| |
230 | source and repair | | |
231 | packets |(5) Explicit Source FEC | |
232 +----------------------+ Payload IDs +----------------+
233 | Repair FEC Payload IDs
234 | Repair symbols
235 |
236 |(7) FEC source and repair packets
237 v
238 +----------------------+
239 | Transport Layer |
240 | (e.g., UDP) |
241 +----------------------+
243 Figure 1: Terminology used in this document (sender).
245 3.2. Notations
247 This document uses the following notations: Some of them are FEC
248 scheme specific:
249 k denotes the number of source symbols in a source block.
250 max_k denotes the maximum number of source symbols for any source
251 block.
252 n denotes the number of encoding symbols generated for a source
253 block.
254 E denotes the encoding symbol length in bytes.
255 CR denotes the "code rate", i.e., the k/n ratio.
256 N1 denotes the target number of "1s" per column in the left side
257 of the parity check matrix.
258 N1m3 denotes the value N1 - 3.
259 a^^b denotes a raised to the power b.
261 Some of them are FECFRAME framework specific:
263 B denotes the number of ADUs per ADU block.
264 max_B denotes the maximum number of ADUs for any ADU block.
266 3.3. Abbreviations
268 This document uses the following abbreviations:
269 ADU stands for Application Data Unit.
270 ESI stands for Encoding Symbol ID.
271 FEC stands for Forward Error (or Erasure) Correction code.
272 FFCI stands for FEC Framework Configuration Information.
273 FSSI stands for FEC Scheme Specific Information.
274 LDPC stands for Low Density Parity Check.
275 MDS stands for Maximum Distance Separable code.
276 SDP stands for Session Description Protocol.
278 4. Common Procedures Related to the ADU Block and Source Block Creation
280 This section introduces the procedures that are used during the ADU
281 block and the related source block creation, for the FEC scheme
282 considered.
284 4.1. Restrictions
286 This specification has the following restrictions:
287 o there MUST be exactly one source symbol per ADUI, and therefore
288 per ADU;
289 o there MUST be exactly one repair symbol per FEC Repair Packet;
290 o there MUST be exactly one source block per ADU block;
291 o the use of the LDPC-Staircase scheme is such that there MUST be
292 exactly one encoding symbol per group, i.e., G MUST be equal to 1
293 [RFC5170];
295 4.2. ADU Block Creation
297 Two kinds of limitations exist that impact the ADU block creation:
298 o at the FEC Scheme level: the FEC Scheme and the FEC codec have
299 limitations that define a maximum source block size;
300 o at the FECFRAME instance level: the target use-case can have real-
301 time constraints that can/will define a maximum ADU block size;
302 Note that terminology "maximum source block size" and "maximum ADU
303 block size" depends on the point of view that is adopted (FEC Scheme
304 versus FECFRAME instance). However, in this document, both refer to
305 the same value since Section 4.1 requires there is exactly one source
306 symbol per ADU. We now detail each of these aspects.
308 The maximum source block size in symbols, max_k, depends on several
309 parameters: the code rate (CR), the Encoding Symbol ID (ESI) field
310 length in the Explicit Source/Repair FEC Payload ID (16 bits), as
311 well as possible internal codec limitations. More specifically,
312 max_k cannot be larger than the following values, derived from the
313 ESI field size limitation, for a given code rate:
314 max1_k = 2^^(16 - ceil(Log2(1/CR)))
315 Some common max1_k values are:
316 o CR == 1 (no repair symbol): max1_k = 2^^16 = 65536 symbols
317 o 1/2 <= CR < 1: max1_k = 2^^15 = 32,768 symbols
318 o 1/4 <= CR < 1/2: max1_k = 2^^14 = 16,384 symbols
320 Additionally, a codec can impose other limitations on the maximum
321 source block size, for instance, because of a limited working memory
322 size. This decision MUST be clarified at implementation time, when
323 the target use-case is known. This results in a max2_k limitation.
325 Then, max_k is given by:
326 max_k = min(max1_k, max2_k)
327 Note that this calculation is only required at the encoder (sender),
328 since the actual k parameter (k <= max_k) is communicated to the
329 decoder (receiver) through the Explicit Source/Repair FEC Payload ID.
331 The source ADU flows can have real-time constraints. When there are
332 multiple flows, with different real-time constraints, let us consider
333 the most stringent constraints (see [RFC6363], section 10.2, item 6
334 for recommendations when several flows are globally protected). In
335 that case the maximum number of ADUs of an ADU block must not exceed
336 a certain threshold since it directly impacts the decoding delay.
337 The larger the ADU block size, the longer a decoder may have to wait
338 until it has received a sufficient number of encoding symbols for
339 decoding to succeed, and therefore the larger the decoding delay.
340 When the target use-case is known, these real-time constraints result
341 in an upper bound to the ADU block size, max_rt.
343 For instance, if the use-case specifies a maximum decoding latency,
344 l, and if each source ADU covers a duration d of a continuous media
345 (we assume here the simple case of a constant bit rate ADU flow),
346 then the ADU block size must not exceed:
347 max_rt = floor(l / d)
348 After encoding, this block will produce a set of at most n = max_rt /
349 CR encoding symbols. These n encoding symbols will have to be sent
350 at a rate of n / l packets per second. For instance, with d = 10 ms,
351 l = 1 s, max_rt = 100 ADUs.
353 If we take into account all these constraints, we find:
354 max_B = min(max_k, max_rt)
355 This max_B parameter is an upper bound to the number of ADUs that can
356 constitute an ADU block.
358 4.3. Source Block Creation
360 In its most general form the FECFRAME framework and the LDPC-
361 Staircase FEC scheme are meant to protect a set of independent flows.
362 Since the flows have no relationship to one another, the ADU size of
363 each flow can potentially vary significantly. Even in the special
364 case of a single flow, the ADU sizes can largely vary (e.g., the
365 various frames of a "Group of Pictures (GOP) of an H.264 flow). This
366 diversity must be addressed since the LDPC-Staircase FEC scheme
367 requires a constant encoding symbol size (E parameter) per source
368 block. Since this specification requires that there is only one
369 source symbol per ADU, E must be large enough to contain all the ADUs
370 of an ADU block along with their prepended 3 bytes (see below).
372 In situations where E is determined per source block (default,
373 specified by the FFCI/FSSI with S = 0, Section 5.1.1.2), E is equal
374 to the size of the largest ADU of this source block plus three (for
375 the prepended 3 bytes, see below). In this case, upon receiving the
376 first FEC Repair Packet for this source block, since this packet MUST
377 contain a single repair symbol (Section 5.1.3), a receiver determines
378 the E parameter used for this source block.
380 In situations where E is fixed (specified by the FFCI/FSSI with S =
381 1, Section 5.1.1.2), then E must be greater or equal to the size of
382 the largest ADU of this source block plus three (for the prepended 3
383 bytes, see below). If this is not the case, an error is returned.
384 How to handle this error is use-case specific (e.g., a larger E
385 parameter may be communicated to the receivers in an updated FFCI
386 message, using an appropriate mechanism) and is not considered by
387 this specification.
389 The ADU block is always encoded as a single source block. There are
390 a total of B <= max_B ADUs in this ADU block. For the ADU i, with 0
391 <= i <= B-1, 3 bytes are prepended (Figure 2):
392 o The first byte, FID[i] (Flow ID), contains the integer identifier
393 associated to the source ADU flow to which this ADU belongs to.
394 It is assumed that a single byte is sufficient, or said
395 differently, that no more than 256 flows will be protected by a
396 single instance of the FECFRAME framework.
397 o The following two bytes, L[i] (Length), contain the length of this
398 ADU, in network byte order (i.e., big endian). This length is for
399 the ADU itself and does not include the FID[i], L[i], or Pad[i]
400 fields.
402 Then zero padding is added to ADU i (if needed) in field Pad[i], for
403 alignment purposes up to a size of exactly E bytes. The data unit
404 resulting from the ADU i and the F[i], L[i] and Pad[i] fields, is
405 called ADU Information (or ADUI). Each ADUI contributes to exactly
406 one source symbol to the source block.
408 Encoding Symbol Length (E)
409 < -------------------------------------------------------------- >
410 +----+----+-----------------------+------------------------------+
411 |F[0]|L[0]| ADU[0] | Pad[0] |
412 +----+----+----------+------------+------------------------------+
413 |F[1]|L[1]| ADU[1] | Pad[1] |
414 +----+----+----------+-------------------------------------------+
415 |F[2]|L[2]| ADU[2] |
416 +----+----+------+-----------------------------------------------+
417 |F[3]|L[3]|ADU[3]| Pad[3] |
418 +----+----+------+-----------------------------------------------+
419 \_______________________________ _______________________________/
420 \/
421 simple FEC encoding
423 +----------------------------------------------------------------+
424 | Repair 4 |
425 +----------------------------------------------------------------+
426 . .
427 . .
428 +----------------------------------------------------------------+
429 | Repair 7 |
430 +----------------------------------------------------------------+
432 Figure 2: Source block creation, for code rate 1/2 (equal number of
433 source and repair symbols, 4 in this example), and S = 0.
435 Note that neither the initial 3 bytes nor the optional padding are
436 sent over the network. However, they are considered during FEC
437 encoding. It means that a receiver who lost a certain FEC source
438 packet (e.g., the UDP datagram containing this FEC source packet)
439 will be able to recover the ADUI if FEC decoding succeeds. Thanks to
440 the initial 3 bytes, this receiver will get rid of the padding (if
441 any) and identify the corresponding ADU flow.
443 5. LDPC-Staircase FEC Scheme for Arbitrary ADU Flows
445 5.1. Formats and Codes
447 5.1.1. FEC Framework Configuration Information
449 The FEC Framework Configuration Information (or FFCI) includes
450 information that MUST be communicated between the sender and
451 receiver(s). More specifically, it enables the synchronization of
452 the FECFRAME sender and receiver instances. It includes both
453 mandatory elements and scheme-specific elements, as detailed below.
455 5.1.1.1. Mandatory Information
457 FEC Encoding ID: the value assigned to this fully-specified FEC
458 scheme MUST be XXX, as assigned by IANA (Section 8).
459 When SDP is used to communicate the FFCI, this FEC Encoding ID is
460 carried in the 'encoding-id' parameter.
462 5.1.1.2. FEC Scheme-Specific Information
464 The FEC Scheme Specific Information (FSSI) includes elements that are
465 specific to the present FEC scheme. More precisely:
466 PRNG seed (seed): a non-negative 32 bit integer used as the seed of
467 the Pseudo Random Number Generator, as defined in [RFC5170].
468 Encoding symbol length (E): a non-negative integer that indicates
469 either the length of each encoding symbol in bytes (strict mode,
470 i.e., if S = 1), or the maximum length of any encoding symbol
471 (i.e., if S = 0).
472 Strict (S) flag: when set to 1 this flag indicates that the E
473 parameter is the actual encoding symbol length value for each
474 block of the session (unless otherwise notified by an updated FFCI
475 if this possibility is considered by the use-case or CDP). When
476 set to 0 this flag indicates that the E parameter is the maximum
477 encoding symbol length value for each block of the session (unless
478 otherwise notified by an updated FFCI if this possibility is
479 considered by the use-case or CDP).
480 N1 minus 3 (n1m3): an integer between 0 (default) and 7, inclusive.
481 The number of "1s" per column in the left side of the parity check
482 matrix, N1, is then equal to N1m3 + 3, as specified in [RFC5170].
483 These elements are required both by the sender (LDPC-Staircase
484 encoder) and the receiver(s) (LDPC-Staircase decoder).
486 When SDP is used to communicate the FFCI, this FEC scheme-specific
487 information is carried in the 'fssi' parameter in textual
488 representation as specified in [RFC6364]. For instance:
490 fssi=seed:1234,E:1400,S:0,n1m3:0
492 If another mechanism requires the FSSI to be carried as an opaque
493 octet string (for instance after a Base64 encoding), the encoding
494 format consists of the following 7 octets:
495 o PRNG seed (seed): 32 bit field.
496 o Encoding symbol length (E): 16 bit field.
497 o Strict (S) flag: 1 bit field.
498 o Reserved: a 4 bit field that MUST be set to zero.
500 o N1m3 parameter (n1m3): 3 bit field.
502 0 1 2
503 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3
504 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
505 | PRNG seed (seed) |
506 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
507 | Encoding Symbol Length (E) |S| resvd | n1m3|
508 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
510 Figure 3: FSSI encoding format.
512 5.1.2. Explicit Source FEC Payload ID
514 A FEC source packet MUST contain an Explicit Source FEC Payload ID
515 that is appended to the end of the packet as illustrated in Figure 4.
517 +--------------------------------+
518 | IP Header |
519 +--------------------------------+
520 | Transport Header |
521 +--------------------------------+
522 | ADU |
523 +--------------------------------+
524 | Explicit Source FEC Payload ID |
525 +--------------------------------+
527 Figure 4: Structure of a FEC Source Packet with the Explicit Source
528 FEC Payload ID.
530 More precisely, the Explicit Source FEC Payload ID is composed of the
531 following fields (Figure 5):
532 Source Block Number (SBN) (16 bit field): this field identifies the
533 source block to which this FEC source packet belongs.
534 Encoding Symbol ID (ESI) (16 bit field): this field identifies the
535 source symbol contained in this FEC source packet. This value is
536 such that 0 <= ESI <= k - 1 for source symbols.
537 Source Block Length (k) (16 bit field): this field provides the
538 number of source symbols for this source block, i.e., the k
539 parameter.
541 0 1 2 3
542 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
543 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
544 | Source Block Number (SBN) | Encoding Symbol ID (ESI) |
545 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
546 | Source Block Length (k) |
547 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
549 Figure 5: Source FEC Payload ID encoding format.
551 5.1.3. Repair FEC Payload ID
553 A FEC repair packet MUST contain a Repair FEC Payload ID that is
554 prepended to the repair symbol(s) as illustrated in Figure 6. There
555 MUST be a single repair symbol per FEC repair packet.
557 +--------------------------------+
558 | IP Header |
559 +--------------------------------+
560 | Transport Header |
561 +--------------------------------+
562 | Repair FEC Payload ID |
563 +--------------------------------+
564 | Repair Symbol |
565 +--------------------------------+
567 Figure 6: Structure of a FEC Repair Packet with the Repair FEC
568 Payload ID.
570 More precisely, the Repair FEC Payload ID is composed of the
571 following fields: (Figure 7):
572 Source Block Number (SBN) (16 bit field): this field identifies the
573 source block to which the FEC repair packet belongs.
574 Encoding Symbol ID (ESI) (16 bit field) this field identifies the
575 repair symbol contained in this FEC repair packet. This value is
576 such that k <= ESI <= n - 1 for repair symbols.
577 Source Block Length (k) (16 bit field): this field provides the
578 number of source symbols for this source block, i.e., the k
579 parameter.
580 Number of Encoding Symbols (n) (16 bit field): this field provides
581 the number of encoding symbols for this source block, i.e., the n
582 parameter.
584 0 1 2 3
585 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
586 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
587 | Source Block Number (SBN) | Encoding Symbol ID (ESI) |
588 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
589 | Source Block Length (k) | Number Encoding Symbols (n) |
590 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
592 Figure 7: Repair FEC Payload ID encoding format.
594 5.2. Procedures
596 The following procedures apply:
597 o The source block creation MUST follow the procedures specified in
598 Section 4.3.
599 o The SBN value MUST start with value 0 for the first block of the
600 ADU flow and MUST be incremented by 1 for each new source block.
601 Wrapping to zero will happen for long sessions, after value 2^^16
602 - 1.
603 o The ESI of encoding symbols MUST start with value 0 for the first
604 symbol and MUST be managed sequentially. The first k values (0 <=
605 ESI <= k - 1) identify source symbols whereas the last n-k values
606 (k <= ESI <= n - 1) identify repair symbols.
607 o The FEC repair packet creation MUST follow the procedures
608 specified in Section 5.1.3.
610 5.3. FEC Code Specification
612 The present document inherits from [RFC5170] the specification of the
613 core LDPC-Staircase codes for a packet erasure transmission channel.
615 Because of the requirement to have exactly one encoding symbol per
616 group, i.e., because G MUST be equal to 1 (Section 4.1), several
617 parts of [RFC5170] are useless. In particular, this is the case of
618 Section 5.6. "Identifying the G Symbols of an Encoding Symbol
619 Group".
621 6. Security Considerations
623 The FEC Framework document [RFC6363] provides a comprehensive
624 analysis of security considerations applicable to FEC schemes.
625 Therefore the present section follows the security considerations
626 section of [RFC6363] and only discusses topics that are specific to
627 the use of LDPC-Staircase codes.
629 6.1. Attacks Against the Data Flow
631 6.1.1. Access to Confidential Content
633 The LDPC-Staircase FEC Scheme specified in this document does not
634 change the recommendations of [RFC6363]. To summarize, if
635 confidentiality is a concern, it is RECOMMENDED that one of the
636 solutions mentioned in [RFC6363] is used, with special considerations
637 to the way this solution is applied (e.g., before versus after FEC
638 protection, and within the end-system versus in a middlebox), to the
639 operational constraints (e.g., performing FEC decoding in a protected
640 environment may be complicated or even impossible) and to the threat
641 model.
643 6.1.2. Content Corruption
645 The LDPC-Staircase FEC Scheme specified in this document does not
646 change the recommendations of [RFC6363]. To summarize, it is
647 RECOMMENDED that one of the solutions mentioned in [RFC6363] is used
648 on both the FEC Source and Repair Packets.
650 6.2. Attacks Against the FEC Parameters
652 The FEC Scheme specified in this document defines parameters that can
653 be the basis of several attacks. More specifically, the following
654 parameters of the FFCI may be modified by an attacker
655 (Section 5.1.1.2):
656 o FEC Encoding ID: changing this parameter leads the receiver to
657 consider a different FEC Scheme, which enables an attacker to
658 create a Denial of Service (DoS).
659 o Encoding symbol length (E): setting this E parameter to a value
660 smaller than the valid one enables an attacker to create a DoS
661 since the repair symbols and certain source symbols will be larger
662 than E, which is an incoherency for the receiver. Setting this E
663 parameter to a value larger than the valid one has similar impacts
664 when S=1 since the received repair symbol size will be smaller
665 than expected. On the opposite it will not lead to any
666 incoherency when S=0 since the actual symbol length value for the
667 block is determined by the size of any received repair symbol, as
668 long as this value is smaller than E. However setting this E
669 parameter to a larger value may have impacts on receivers that
670 pre-allocate memory space in advance to store incoming symbols.
671 o Strict (S) flag: flipping this S flag from 0 to 1 (i.e., E is now
672 considered as a strict value) enables an attacker to mislead the
673 receiver if the actual symbol size varies over different source
674 blocks. Flipping this S flag from 1 to 0 has no major
675 consequences unless the receiver requires to have a fixed E value
676 (e.g., because the receiver pre-allocates memory space).
678 o N1 minus 3 (n1m3): changing this parameter leads the receiver to
679 consider a different code, which enables an attacker to create a
680 DoS.
682 It is therefore RECOMMENDED that security measures are taken to
683 guarantee the FFCI integrity, as specified in [RFC6363]. How to
684 achieve this depends on the way the FFCI is communicated from the
685 sender to the receiver, which is not specified in this document.
687 Similarly, attacks are possible against the Explicit Source FEC
688 Payload ID and Repair FEC Payload ID: by modifying the Source Block
689 Number (SBN), or the Encoding Symbol ID (ESI), or the Source Block
690 Length (k), or the Number Encoding Symbols (n), an attacker can
691 easily corrupt the block identified by the SBN. Other consequences,
692 that are use-case and/or CDP dependant, may also happen. It is
693 therefore RECOMMENDED that security measures are taken to guarantee
694 the FEC Source and Repair Packets as stated in [RFC6363].
696 6.3. When Several Source Flows are to be Protected Together
698 The LDPC-Staircase FEC Scheme specified in this document does not
699 change the recommendations of [RFC6363].
701 6.4. Baseline Secure FEC Framework Operation
703 The LDPC-Staircase FEC Scheme specified in this document does not
704 change the recommendations of [RFC6363] concerning the use of the
705 IPsec/ESP security protocol as a mandatory to implement (but not
706 mandatory to use) security scheme. This is well suited to situations
707 where the only insecure domain is the one over which the FEC
708 Framework operates.
710 7. Operations and Management Considerations
712 The FEC Framework document [RFC6363] provides a comprehensive
713 analysis of operations and management considerations applicable to
714 FEC schemes. Therefore the present section only discusses topics
715 that are specific to the use of LDPC-Staircase codes as specified in
716 this document.
718 7.1. Operational Recommendations
720 LDPC-Staircase codes have excellent erasure recovery capabilities
721 with large source blocks, close to ideal MDS codes. For instance,
722 independently of FECFRAME, with source block size k=1024 symbols,
723 CR=2/3, N1=7, G=1, a hybrid ITerative/Maximum Likelihood (IT/ML)
724 decoding approach (see below) and when all symbols are sent in a
725 random order, the average overhead amounts to 0.237% (i.e., receiving
726 2.43 symbols in addition to k enables a successful decoding with a
727 probability 0.5) and an overhead of 1.46% (i.e., receiving 15 symbols
728 in addition to k) is sufficient to reduce the decoding failure
729 probability to 8.2*10^^-5. This is why these codes are a good
730 solution to protect a single high bitrate source flow as in
731 [Matsuzono10], or to protect globally several mid-rate source flows
732 within a single FECFRAME instance: in both cases the source block
733 size can be assumed to be equal to a few hundreds (or more) source
734 symbols.
736 LDPC-Staircase codes are also a good solution whenever processing
737 requirements at a software encoder or decoder must be kept to a
738 minimum. This is true when the decoder uses an IT decoding
739 algorithm, or an ML algorithm (we use a Gaussian Elimination as the
740 ML algorithm) when this latter is carefully implemented, or a mixture
741 of both techniques which is the recommended solution
742 [Cunche08][CunchePHD10][LDPC-codec-OpenFEC]. For instance an average
743 decoding speed between 1.78 Gbps (overhead of 2 symbols in addition
744 to k, corresponding to a very bad channel, close to the theoretical
745 decoding limit, where ML decoding is required) and 3.41 Gbps
746 (corresponding to a medium quality channel where IT decoding is
747 sufficient) is easily achieved with a source block size composed of
748 k=1024 source symbols, a code rate CR=2/3 (i.e., 512 repair symbols),
749 1024 byte long symbols, G=1, and N1=7, on an Intel Xeon 5120/1.86GHz
750 workstation running Linux/64 bits. Under the same conditions, on a
751 Samsung Galaxy SII (GT-I9100P model, featuring an ARM Cortex-A9/1.2
752 GHz processor and running Android 2.3.4), decoding speed is between
753 278 Mbps (overhead of 2 symbols and ML decoding) and 626 Mbps (IT
754 decoding).
756 As the source block size decreases, the erasure recovery capabilities
757 of LDPC codes in general also decrease. In the case of LDPC-
758 Staircase codes, in order to limit this phenomenon, it is recommended
759 to use a value of the N1 parameter at least equal to 7 (e.g.,
760 experiments carried out in [Matsuzono10] use N1=7 if k=170 symbols,
761 and N1=5 otherwise). For instance, independently of FECFRAME, with
762 source block size k=256 symbols, CR=2/3, N1=7, and G=1, the average
763 overhead amounts to 0.706% (i.e., receiving 1.8 symbols in addition
764 to k enables a successful decoding with a probability 0.5), and an
765 overhead of 5.86% (i.e., receiving 15 symbols ina addition to k) is
766 sufficient to reduce the decoding failure probability to 5.9*10^^-5.
768 With very small source blocks (e.g., a few tens of symbols), using
769 for instance Reed-Solomon codes [SIMPLE_RS] or 2D parity check codes
770 may be more appropriate.
772 The way the FEC Repair Packets are transmitted is of high importance.
774 A good strategy, that works well for any kind of channel loss model,
775 consists in sending FEC Repair Packets in random order (rather than
776 in sequence) while FEC Source Packets are sent first and in sequence.
777 Sending all packets in a random order is another possibility, but it
778 requires that all repair symbols for a source block be produced
779 first, which adds some extra delay at a sender.
781 8. IANA Considerations
783 This document registers one value in the FEC Framework (FECFRAME) FEC
784 Encoding IDs registry [RFC6363] as follows:
785 o XXX refers to the Simple LDPC-Staircase FEC Scheme for Arbitrary
786 Packet Flows, as defined in Section 5 of this document.
788 9. Acknowledgments
790 The authors want to thank K. Matsuzono, J. Detchart and H. Asaeda for
791 their contributions in evaluating the use of LDPC-Staircase codes in
792 the context of FECFRAME [Matsuzono10].
794 10. References
796 10.1. Normative References
798 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
799 Requirement Levels", RFC 2119.
801 [RFC5170] Roca, V., Neumann, C., and D. Furodet, "Low Density Parity
802 Check (LDPC) Forward Error Correction", RFC 5170,
803 June 2008.
805 [RFC6363] Watson, M., Begen, A., and V. Roca, "Forward Error
806 Correction (FEC) Framework", RFC 6363, September 2011.
808 [RFC6364] Begen, A., "Session Description Protocol Elements for the
809 Forward Error Correction (FEC) Framework", RFC 6364,
810 October 2011.
812 10.2. Informative References
814 [RFC3453] Luby, M., Vicisano, L., Gemmell, J., Rizzo, L., Handley,
815 M., and J. Crowcroft, "The Use of Forward Error Correction
816 (FEC) in Reliable Multicast", RFC 3453, December 2002.
818 [RFC5052] Watson, M., Luby, M., and L. Vicisano, "Forward Error
819 Correction (FEC) Building Block", RFC 5052, August 2007.
821 [RFC5510] Lacan, J., Roca, V., Peltotalo, J., and S. Peltotalo,
822 "Reed-Solomon Forward Error Correction (FEC) Schemes",
823 RFC 5510, April 2009.
825 [SIMPLE_RS]
826 Roca, V., Cunche, M., Lacan, J., Bouabdallah, A., and K.
827 Matsuzono, "Simple Reed-Solomon Forward Error Correction
828 (FEC) Scheme for FECFRAME",
829 draft-ietf-fecframe-simple-rs-02 (Work in Progress),
830 March 2012.
832 [RFC5053] Luby, M., Shokrollahi, A., Watson, M., and T. Stockhammer,
833 "Raptor Forward Error Correction Scheme", RFC 5053,
834 June 2007.
836 [RFC5740] Adamson, B., Bormann, C., Handley, M., and J. Macker,
837 "NACK-Oriented Reliable Multicast (NORM) Transport
838 Protocol", RFC 5740, November 2009.
840 [RFC5775] Luby, M., Watson, M., and L. Vicisano, "Asynchronous
841 Layered Coding (ALC) Protocol Instantiation", RFC 5775,
842 April 2010.
844 [Cunche08]
845 Cunche, M. and V. Roca, "Optimizing the Error Recovery
846 Capabilities of LDPC-Staircase Codes Featuring a Gaussian
847 Elimination Decoding Scheme", 10th IEEE International
848 Workshop on Signal Processing for Space Communications
849 (SPSC'08), October 2008.
851 [CunchePHD10]
852 Cunche, M., "High performances AL-FEC codes for the
853 erasure channel : variation around LDPC codes", PhD
854 dissertation (in
855 French) (http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-
856 00451336/en/), June 2010.
858 [Matsuzono10]
859 Matsuzono, K., Detchart, J., Cunche, M., Roca, V., and H.
860 Asaeda, "Performance Analysis of a High-Performance Real-
861 Time Application with Several AL-FEC Schemes", 35th Annual
862 IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2010),
863 October 2010.
865 [LDPC-codec]
866 Cunche, M., Roca, V., Neumann, C., and J. Laboure, "LDPC-
867 Staircase/LDPC-Triangle Codec Reference Implementation",
868 INRIA Rhone-Alpes and STMicroelectronics,
869 .
871 [LDPC-codec-OpenFEC]
872 "The OpenFEC project", .
874 Authors' Addresses
876 Vincent Roca
877 INRIA
878 655, av. de l'Europe
879 Inovallee; Montbonnot
880 ST ISMIER cedex 38334
881 France
883 Email: vincent.roca@inria.fr
884 URI: http://planete.inrialpes.fr/people/roca/
886 Mathieu Cunche
887 INSA-Lyon/INRIA
888 Laboratoire CITI
889 6 av. des Arts
890 Villeurbanne cedex 69621
891 France
893 Email: mathieu.cunche@inria.fr
894 URI: http://mathieu.cunche.free.fr/
896 Jerome Lacan
897 ISAE, Univ. of Toulouse
898 10 av. Edouard Belin; BP 54032
899 Toulouse cedex 4 31055
900 France
902 Email: jerome.lacan@isae.fr
903 URI: http://personnel.isae.fr/jerome-lacan/