Methods for seamless delivery of broadcast and multicast content across cell borders and/or between different transmission schemes and related apparatus

A communication method using a protocol structure for a communication system, comprising a radio link control layer and a forward error correction layer disposed above the radio link control layer, the method comprising:

• receiving by the forward error correction layer a first-type of information over a radio bearer before the first-type of information reaches the radio link control layer;
• framing by the forward error correction layer the first-type of information into equal size frames before the first-type of information reaches the radio link control layer to generate a second-type of information;
• using the second-type of information in the forward error correction layer to generate rows of redundancy information that are added to the second-type of information to generate an outer code block;
• and
• adding by the forward error correction layer a sequence number to each frame, before transmitting to the radio link control layer.

A method of encoding information before transmitting the information on a common channel in a system that includes a radio link control layer, comprising:

• receiving the information from a radio bearer;
• and
• outer block coding the information before passing the information to a radio link control layer, wherein the information comprises content, and wherein outer block coding comprises:
• organizing the content into data blocks;
• and
• adding overhead information to each block that identifies that block by a sequence number that includes an inner block number and an outer block number.

A non-transitory processor-readable storage medium having stored thereon software instructions configured to cause a processor to perform operations comprising:

• receiving information from a radio bearer;
• and
• outer block coding the information before passing the information to a radio link control layer, wherein the information comprises content, and wherein outer block coding comprises:
• organizing the content into data blocks;
• and
• adding overhead information to each data block that identifies that block by a sequence number that includes an inner block number and an outer block number.