Error protection for ATM‐based wireless networking systems[1]Copyright of this work retained by Bellcore,but permission to publish it is granted to the Publisher.

Variable rate error protection is required to support the broad range of quality of service (QoS) requirements for multimedia services in future Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)‐based wireless networking systems known as wireless ATM (WATM). In this paper, the performance of a rate‐compatible punctured convolution (RCPC) coding scheme is examined. It provides adaptive forward error correction (FEC) at the physical (PHY) layer of the (non‐ATM) wireless access segment, that interworks with the fixed ATM transport network. Bit error rate (BER) performance of the RCPC codes is evaluated for a range of wireless protocol data unit (PDU) formats. The throughput is also compared with well known Bose‐Chaudhuri‐Hocquenghem (BCH) and Reed‐Solomon (RS) block codes. An hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ)/FEC protocol that uses RCPC coding to distribute error protection between the wireless PHY and data link control (DLC) layers is also presented. Issues relating to complexity/cost trade‐off, and effects of multipath fading, require further study.