we have sensors in the wild that send their data to a server every day via TCP/IP, either through 3G or through satellite for the physical layer. The sensors can automatically switch from one to the other depending on their location and the quality of the signal with the local 3G operator.

Given that the 3G and satellite communications are very expensive, we want to minimize the amount of data to send. But also, we want to protect ourselves from lost data.

What would be the best strategy to ensure with reasonable certainty that the integrity of our data is preserved, while minimizing the amount of redundancy, i.e the amount of data transmitted ?

I've read about the zfec codec, but I'm not sure if we need to transmit all the chunks, or if we need to send a hash code along each chunk.