Intermediate performance analysis of fountain code based on the combined degree distribution

The intermediate performance of fountain codes determines the number of source packets the decoder can recover when the number of received packets is insufficient and cannot be successfully recovered. In some 5G/6G air-sea communication scenarios, the nodes such as UAVs need to transmit images, videos, and other data. In contrast, in air-sea communication scenarios, the channel has a certain degree of randomness, which increases the risk of the communication link being disconnected. In extreme cases, the receiver could only complete the fountain code decoding in an intermediate decoding state. Therefore, for air-sea communications, improved intermediate performance is meaningful. It has been demonstrated that using combined degree distribution in the fountain code coding process can effectively improve the successful decoding probability in complex channel environment scenarios, such as air-sea communication. However, less work has been done on the intermediate performance of combined-degree distributed fountain codes. This paper proposes an optimized combined degree distribution that enhances intermediate performance for combined degree distribution fountain codes. Simulation results show that the optimized combined degree distribution proposed in this paper can enhance the intermediate performance of fountain codes.