Alcatel Lucent

Natalie Degrande

Danny De Vleeschauwer

Koenraad Laevens

The present invention relates to a new error control paradigm in a packet switched network that is particularly advantageous for multicast transmission. A transmission Status Vector TSV (T) is updated at the sender side whenever a new outgoing data packet (Dj&#x2212;1) is scheduled for transmission. A corresponding Reception status Vector RSV (R) is similarly updated at the receive side whenever a new incoming and correctly indexed data packet (Dj&#x2212;1) is validly received. As soon as a missing or corrupted data packet (Dj) is detected, the update of the RSV is suspended. A request is then sent to the sender to get the current Tsv's value, or a part thereof. The erroneous data packet is then recovered from the current TSV's value (Sk,m), from the lastly updated RSV's value (Sj&#x2212;1), and from otherwise validly received data packets (Dj+1, . . . , Dk). The present invention more specifically relates to a transmitting unit () and a receiving unit () implementing that paradigm, and correspondingly to a method for protecting a flow of indexed data packets against data lost or data corruption, and a method for recovering a missing or corrupted data packet within a flow of indexed data packets.

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Overmere, Belgium

Natalie Degrande