The non-uniform demand network coding problem is posed as a single-source and multiple-sink network transmission problem where the sinks may have heterogeneous demands. In contrast with multicast problems, non-uniform demand problems are concerned with the amounts of data received by each sink, rather than the specifics of the received data. In this work, we enumerate non-uniform network demand scenarios under which network coding solutions can be found in polynomial time. This is accomplished by relating the demand problem with the graph coloring problem, and then applying results from the strong perfect graph theorem to identify coloring problems which can be solved in polynomial time. This characterization of efficiently-solvable non-uniform demand problems is an important step in understanding such problems, as it allows us to better understand situations under which the NP-complete problem might be tractable.
We give an information flow interpretation for multicasting using network coding. This generalizes the fluid model used to represent flows to a single receiver. Using the generalized model, we present a decentralized algorithm to minimize the number of packets that undergo network coding. We also propose a decentralized algorithm to construct capacity achieving multicast codes when the processing at some nodes is restricted to routing. The proposed algorithms can be coupled with existing decentralized schemes to achieve minimum cost muticast.
We propose a new way to construct a multicast coding scheme for linear deterministic relay networks. Our construction can be regarded as a generalization of the well-known multicast network coding scheme of Jaggi et al. to linear deterministic relay networks and is based on the notion of flow for a unicast session that was introduced by the authors in earlier work. We present randomized and deterministic polynomial--time versions of our algorithm and show that for a network with $g$ destinations, our deterministic algorithm can achieve the capacity in $\left\lceil \log(g+1)\right\rceil $ uses …
In this letter, we propose two power allocation schemes based on the statistical channel state information (CSI) and instantaneous s->r CSI at transmitters respectively for a 2-N-2 cooperative multicast system with non-regenerative network coding.Then the isolated precoder and the distributed precoder are respectively applied to the schemes to further improve the system performance by achieving the full diversity gain. Finally, we demonstrate that joint instantaneous s->r CSI based power allocation and distributed precoder design achieve the best performance.
This letter focuses on power allocation schemes for a basic multicast cell with wireless regenerative network coding (RNC). In RNC, mixed signals received from the two sources are jointly decoded by the relay where decoded symbols are superposed in either the complex field (RCNC) or Galois field (RGNC) before being retransmitted. We deduce the optimal statistical channels state information (CSI) based power allocation and give a comparison between the two RNCs. When instantaneous CSI is available at each transmitter, we propose a suboptimal power allocation for RCNC, which achieves better perf…
We give an algorithm for finding network encoding and decoding equations for error-free multicasting networks with multiple sources and sinks. The algorithm given is efficient (polynomial complexity) and works on any kind of network (acyclic, link cyclic, flow cyclic, or even in the presence of knots). The key idea will be the appropriate use of the delay (both natural and additional) during the encoding. The resulting code will always work with finite delay with binary encoding coefficients.
The groupcast index coding (GIC) problem is a generalization of the index coding problem, where one packet can be demanded by multiple users. In this paper, we propose a new coding scheme called independent user partition multicast (IUPM) for the GIC problem. The novelty of this scheme compared to the user partition multicast (UPM) (Shanmugam \textit{et al.}, 2015) is in removing redundancies in the UPM solution by eliminating the linearly dependent coded packets. We also prove that the UPM scheme subsumes the packet partition multicast (PPM) scheme (Tehrani \textit{et al.}, 2012). Hence, the …
For a multi-source multi-terminal noiseless network, the key-dissemination problem involves the task of multicasting a secret key K from the network sources to its terminals. As in secure multicast network-coding, in the key-dissemination problem the source nodes have access to independent randomness and, as the network is noiseless, the resulting key K is a function of the sources' information. However, different from traditional forms of multicast, in key-dissemination the key K need not consist of source messages, but rather may be any function of the information generated at the sources, a…
Random linear network coding is a particularly decentralized approach to the multicast problem. Use of random network codes introduces a non-zero probability however that some sinks will not be able to successfully decode the required sources. One of the main theoretical motivations for random network codes stems from the lower bound on the probability of successful decoding reported by Ho et. al. (2003). This result demonstrates that all sinks in a linearly solvable network can successfully decode all sources provided that the random code field size is large enough. This paper develops a new …
In this paper, we investigate the impact of network coding at the relay node on the stable throughput rate in multicasting cooperative wireless networks. The proposed protocol adopts Network-level cooperation in contrast to the traditional physical layer cooperative protocols and in addition uses random linear network coding at the relay node. The traffic is assumed to be bursty and the relay node forwards its packets during the periods of source silence which allows better utilization for channel resources. Our results show that cooperation will lead to higher stable throughput rates than con…
Sparse random linear network coding (SRLNC) used as a class of erasure codes to ensure the reliability of multicast communications has been widely investigated. However, an exact expression for the decoding success probability of SRLNC is still unknown, and existing expressions are either asymptotic or approximate. In this paper, we derive an exact expression for the decoding success probability of SRLNC. The key to achieving this is to propose a criterion that a vector is contained in a subspace. To obtain this criterion, we construct a basis of a subspace, with respect to this basis, the coo…
The encoding complexity of network coding for single multicast networks has been intensively studied from several aspects: e.g., the time complexity, the required number of encoding links, and the required field size for a linear code solution. However, these issues as well as the solvability are less understood for networks with multiple multicast sessions. Recently, Wang and Shroff showed that the solvability of networks with two unit-rate multicast sessions (2-URMS) can be decided in polynomial time. In this paper, we prove that for the 2-URMS networks: $1)$ the solvability can be determine…
In an acyclic multicast network, it is well known that a linear network coding solution over GF($q$) exists when $q$ is sufficiently large. In particular, for each prime power $q$ no smaller than the number of receivers, a linear solution over GF($q$) can be efficiently constructed. In this work, we reveal that a linear solution over a given finite field does \emph{not} necessarily imply the existence of a linear solution over all larger finite fields. Specifically, we prove by construction that: (i) For every source dimension no smaller than 3, there is a multicast network linearly solvable o…
This paper studies a special class of multicast index coding problems where a sender transmits messages to multiple receivers, each with some side information. Here, each receiver knows a unique message a priori, and there is no restriction on how many messages each receiver requests from the sender. For this class of multicast index coding problems, we obtain the optimal index code, which has the shortest codelength for which the sender needs to send in order for all receivers to obtain their (respective) requested messages. This is the first class of index coding problems where the optimal i…
In this paper, we study the contribution of network coding (NC) in improving the multicast capacity of random wireless ad hoc networks when nodes are endowed with multi-packet transmission (MPT) and multi-packet reception (MPR) capabilities. We show that a per session throughput capacity of $Θ(nT^{3}(n))$, where $n$ is the total number of nodes and T(n) is the communication range, can be achieved as a tight bound when each session contains a constant number of sinks. Surprisingly, an identical order capacity can be achieved when nodes have only MPR and MPT capabilities. This result proves that…
Reliable and low latency multicast communication is important for future vehicular communication. Sparse random linear network coding approach used to ensure the reliability of multicast communication has been widely investigated. A fundamental problem of such communication is to characterize the decoding success probability, which is given by the probability of a sparse random matrix over a finite field being full rank. However, the exact expression for the probability of a sparse random matrix being full rank is still unknown, and existing approximations are recursive or not consistently tig…
The problem of network coding with multicast of a single source to multisink has first been studied by Ahlswede, Cai, Li and Yeung in 2000, in which they have established the celebrated max-flow mini-cut theorem on non-physical information flow over a network of independent channels. On the other hand, in 1980, Han has studied the case with correlated multisource and a single sink from the viewpoint of polymatroidal functions in which a necessary and sufficient condition has been demonstrated for reliable transmission over the network. This paper presents an attempt to unify both cases, which …
In this paper, we shed light on how an adaptive, efficient error coding in the transport layer helps ensure the application requirements. We recap the use of MDS codes and show that binary coding can significantly reduce the complexity and hence increase the applicability also for embedded devices. We exploit the persymmetric structure of the generator matrix in polar codes to establish a duality of dispersion over channels (the polarization effect) and over packets (the generality required for multicast transmission), thereby constructing systematic polar codes for incremental redundancy whos…
The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, to establish a tractable model for the underwater acoustic channel useful for network optimization in terms of convexity. Second, to propose a network coding based lower bound for transmission power in underwater acoustic networks, and compare this bound to the performance of several network layer schemes. The underwater acoustic channel is characterized by a path loss that depends strongly on transmission distance and signal frequency. The exact relationship among power, transmission band, distance and capacity for the Gaussian noise scenario is a co…
We consider the problem of serving multicast flows in a crossbar switch. We show that linear network coding across packets of a flow can sustain traffic patterns that cannot be served if network coding were not allowed. Thus, network coding leads to a larger rate region in a multicast crossbar switch. We demonstrate a traffic pattern which requires a switch speedup if coding is not allowed, whereas, with coding the speedup requirement is eliminated completely. In addition to throughput benefits, coding simplifies the characterization of the rate region. We give a graph-theoretic characterizati…
In this paper, for the purposes of information transmission and network error correction simultaneously, three classes of important linear network codes in network coding, linear multicast/broadcast/dispersion codes are generalized to linear network error correction coding, i.e., linear network error correction multicast/broadcast/dispersion codes. We further propose the (weakly, strongly) extended Singleton bounds for these new classes of codes, and define the optimal codes satisfying the corresponding Singleton bounds with equality, which are called multicast/broadcast/dispersion MDS codes r…
We consider a lossy multicast network in which the reliability is provided by means of Random Linear Network Coding. Our goal is to characterise the performance of such network in terms of the probability that a source message is delivered to all destination nodes. Previous studies considered coding over large finite fields, small numbers of destination nodes or specific, often impractical, channel conditions. In contrast, we focus on a general problem, considering arbitrary field size and number of destination nodes, as well as a realistic channel. We propose a lower bound on the probability …
In this paper, we consider multi-quality multicast beamforming of a video stream from a multi-antenna base station (BS) to multiple single-antenna users receiving different qualities of the same video stream, via scalable video coding (SVC). Leveraging the layered structure of SVC and exploiting superposition coding (SC) as well as successive interference cancelation (SIC), we propose a layer-based multi-quality multicast beamforming scheme. To reduce the complexity, we also propose a quality-based multi-quality multicast beamforming scheme, which further utilizes the layered structure of SVC …
This paper examines the problem of rate allocation for multicasting over slow Rayleigh fading channels using network coding. In the proposed model, the network is treated as a collection of Rayleigh fading multiple access channels. In this model, rate allocation scheme that is based solely on the statistics of the channels is presented. The rate allocation scheme is aimed at minimizing the outage probability. An upper bound is presented for the probability of outage in the fading multiple access channel. A suboptimal solution based on this bound is given. A distributed primal-dual gradient alg…
Consider transceiver designs in a multiuser multi-input single-output (MISO) downlink channel, where the users are to receive the same data stream simultaneously. This problem, known as physical-layer multicasting, has drawn much interest. Presently, a popularized approach is transmit beamforming, in which the beamforming optimization is handled by a rank-one approximation method called semidefinite relaxation (SDR). SDR-based beamforming has been shown to be promising for a small or moderate number of users. This paper describes two new transceiver strategies for physical-layer multicasting. …
Multi-resolution codes enable multicast at different rates to different receivers, a setup that is often desirable for graphics or video streaming. We propose a simple, distributed, two-stage message passing algorithm to generate network codes for single-source multicast of multi-resolution codes. The goal of this "pushback algorithm" is to maximize the total rate achieved by all receivers, while guaranteeing decodability of the base layer at each receiver. By conducting pushback and code generation stages, this algorithm takes advantage of inter-layer as well as intra-layer coding. Numerical …
This paper considers vector network coding based on rank-metric codes and subspace codes. Our main result is that vector network coding can significantly reduce the required field size compared to scalar linear network coding in the same multicast network. The achieved gap between the field size of scalar and vector network coding is in the order of $q^{(\ell-1)t^2/\ell}-q^t$, for any $q \geq 2$, where $t$ denotes the dimension of the vector solution, and the number of messages is $2 \ell$, ${\ell \geq 2}$. Previously, only a gap of constant size had been shown. This implies also the same gap …
Interference in wireless networks is one of the key-capacity limiting factor. The multicast capacity of an ad- hoc wireless network decreases with an increasing number of transmitting and/or receiving nodes within a fixed area. Digital Network Coding (DNC) has been shown to improve the multicast capacity of non-interfering wireless network. However recently proposed Physical-layer Network Coding (PNC) and Analog Network Coding (ANC) has shown that it is possible to decode an unknown packet from the collision of two packet, when one of the colliding packet is known a priori. Taking advantage of…
Randomized network coding (RNC) greatly reduces the complexity of implementing network coding in large-scale, heterogeneous networks. This paper examines two tradeoffs in applying RNC: The first studies how the performance of RNC varies with a node's randomizing capabilities. Specifically, a limited randomized network coding (L-RNC) scheme - in which intermediate nodes perform randomized encoding based on only a limited number of random coefficients - is proposed and its performance bounds are analyzed. Such a L-RNC approach is applicable to networks in which nodes have either limited computat…
Coding schemes for discrete memoryless multicast networks (DM-MN) with rate-limited feedback from the receivers and relays to the transmitter are proposed. The schemes improve over the noisy network coding proposed by Lim et al.. For the single relay channel with relay-transmitter feedback, our coding schemes recover Gabbai and Bross's results, and strictly improve on noisy network coding, distributed decode-forward coding proposed by Lim et al., and all known lower bounds on the achievable rates proposed for the setup without feedback. The coding schemes are based on block-Markov coding, supe…
We present a superposition coding scheme for communication over a network, which combines partial decode and forward and noisy network coding. This hybrid scheme is termed as superposition noisy network coding. The scheme is designed and analyzed for single relay channel, single source multicast network and multiple source multicast network. The achievable rate region is determined for each case. The special cases of Gaussian single relay channel and two way relay channel are analyzed for superposition noisy network coding. The achievable rate of the proposed scheme is higher than the existing…
The problem of serving multicast flows in a crossbar switch is considered. Intra-flow linear network coding is shown to achieve a larger rate region than the case without coding. A traffic pattern is presented which is achievable with coding but requires a switch speedup when coding is not allowed. The rate region with coding can be characterized in a simple graph-theoretic manner, in terms of the stable set polytope of the "enhanced conflict graph". No such graph-theoretic characterization is known for the case of fanout splitting without coding. The minimum speedup needed to achieve 100% thr…
It is common in the study of secure multicast network coding in the presence of an eavesdropper that has access to $z$ network links, to assume that the source node is the only node that generates random keys. In this setting, the secure multicast rate is well understood. Computing the secure multicast rate, or even the secure unicast rate, in the more general setting in which all network nodes may generate (independent) random keys is known to be as difficult as computing the (non-secure) capacity of multiple-unicast network coding instances --- a well known open problem. This work treats an …
Random linear network code has to sacrifice part of bandwidth to transfer the coding vectors, thus a head of size k log|T| is appended to each packet. We present a distributed random network coding approach based on the Chinese remainder theorem for general multicast networks. It uses a couple of modulus as the head, thus reduces the size of head to O(log k). This makes it more suitable for scenarios where the number of source nodes is large and the bandwidth is limited. We estimate the multicast rate and show it is satisfactory in performance for randomly designed networks.
The capacity of multiuser networks has been a long-standing problem in information theory. Recently, Avestimehr et al. have proposed a deterministic network model to approximate multiuser wireless networks. This model, known as the ADT network model, takes into account the broadcast nature of wireless medium and interference. We show that the ADT network model can be described within the algebraic network coding framework introduced by Koetter and Medard. We prove that the ADT network problem can be captured by a single matrix, and show that the min-cut of an ADT network is the rank of this ma…
In this work we improve on the bounds presented by Li&Li for network coding gain in the undirected case. A tightened bound for the undirected multicast problem with three terminals is derived. An interesting result shows that with fractional routing, routing throughput can achieve at least 75% of the coding throughput. A tighter bound for the general multicast problem with any number of terminals shows that coding gain is strictly less than 2. Our derived bound depends on the number of terminals in the multicast network and approaches 2 for arbitrarily large number of terminals.
We focus on the following instance of an index coding problem, where a set of receivers are required to decode multiple messages, whilst each knows one of the messages a priori. In particular, here we consider a generalized setting where they are multiple senders, each sender only knows a subset of messages, and all senders are required to collectively transmit the index code. For a single sender, Ong and Ho (ICC, 2012) have established the optimal index codelength, where the lower bound was obtained using a pruning algorithm. In this paper, the pruning algorithm is simplified, and used in con…
Arithmetic Coding (AC) is widely used for the entropy coding of text and video data. It involves recursive partitioning of the range [0,1) in accordance with the relative probabilities of occurrence of the input symbols. A data (image or video) encryption scheme based on arithmetic coding called as Chaotic Arithmetic Coding (CAC) has been presented in previous works. In CAC, a large number of chaotic maps can be used to perform coding, each achieving Shannon optimal compression performance. The exact choice of map is governed by a key. CAC has the effect of scrambling the intervals without mak…
A major challenge of wireless multicast is to be able to support a large number of users while simultaneously maintaining low delay and low feedback overhead. In this paper, we develop a joint coding and feedback scheme named Moving Window Network Coding with Anonymous Feedback (MWNC-AF) that successfully addresses this challenge. In particular, we show that our scheme simultaneously achieves both a constant decoding delay and a constant feedback overhead, irrespective of the number of receivers $n$, without sacrificing either throughput or reliability. We explicitly characterize the asymptoti…
In the practical network communications, many internal nodes in the network are required to not only transmit messages but decode source messages. For different applications, four important classes of linear network codes in network coding theory, i.e., linear multicast, linear broadcast, linear dispersion, and generic network codes, have been studied extensively. More generally, when channels of communication networks are noisy, information transmission and error correction have to be under consideration simultaneously, and thus these four classes of linear network codes are generalized to li…
The classical problem in network coding theory considers communication over multicast networks. Multiple transmitters send independent messages to multiple receivers which decode the same set of messages. In this work, computation over multicast networks is considered: each receiver decodes an identical function of the original messages. For a countably infinite class of two-transmitter two-receiver single-hop linear deterministic networks, the computing capacity is characterized for a linear function (modulo-2 sum) of Bernoulli sources. Inspired by the geometric concept of interference alignm…
We study and compare the Shannon capacity region and the stable throughput region for a random access system in which source nodes multicast their messages to multiple destination nodes. Under an erasure channel model which accounts for interference and allows for multipacket reception, we first characterize the Shannon capacity region. We then consider a queueing-theoretic formulation and characterize the stable throughput region for two different transmission policies: a retransmission policy and random linear coding. Our results indicate that for large blocklengths, the random linear coding…
In this work we study zero vs. epsilon-error capacity in network coding instances. For multicast network coding it is well known that all rates that can be delivered with arbitrarily small error probability can also be delivered with zero error probability; that is, the epsilon-error multicast capacity region and zero-error multicast capacity region are identical. For general network coding instances in which all sources originate at the same source node, Chan and Grant recently showed [ISIT 2010] that, again, epsilon-error communication has no rate advantage over zero-error communication. We …
A Non-Orthogonal Unicast and Multicast (NOUM) transmission system allows a multicast stream intended to all receivers to be jointly transmitted with unicast streams in the same time-frequency resource blocks. While the capacity of the two-user multi-antenna NOUM with perfect Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT) is known and achieved by Dirty Paper Coding (DPC)-assisted NOUM with Superposition Coding (SC), the capacity and the capacity-achieving strategy of the multi-antenna NOUM with partial CSIT remain unknown. In this work, we focus on the partial CSIT setting and make two maj…
Point-to-multipoint communications are expected to play a pivotal role in next-generation networks. This paper refers to a cellular system transmitting layered multicast services to a multicast group of users. Reliability of communications is ensured via different Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) techniques. We deal with a fundamental problem: the computational complexity of the RLNC decoder. The higher the number of decoding operations is, the more the user's computational overhead grows and, consequently, the faster the battery of mobile devices drains. By referring to several sparse RLNC…
We consider the canonical {\em shared link network} formed by a source node, hosting a library of $m$ information messages (files), connected via a noiseless common link to $n$ destination nodes (users), each with a cache of size M files. Users request files at random and independently, according to a given a-priori demand distribution $\qv$. A coding scheme for this network consists of a caching placement (i.e., a mapping of the library files into the user caches) and delivery scheme (i.e., a mapping for the library files and user demands into a common multicast codeword) such that, after the…
Network coding (NC), when combined with multipath routing, enables a linear programming (LP) formulation for a multi-source multicast with intra-session network coding (MISNC) problem. However, it is still hard to solve using conventional methods due to the enormous scale of variables or constraints. In this paper, we try to solve this problem in terms of throughput maximization from an algorithmic perspective. We propose a novel formulation based on the extereme flow decomposition technique, which facilitates the design and analysis of approximation and online algorithms. For the offline scen…
Network Coding encourages information coding across a communication network. While the necessity, benefit and complexity of network coding are sensitive to the underlying graph structure of a network, existing theory on network coding often treats the network topology as a black box, focusing on algebraic or information theoretic aspects of the problem. This work aims at an in-depth examination of the relation between algebraic coding and network topologies. We mathematically establish a series of results along the direction of: if network coding is necessary/beneficial, or if a particular fin…
In this paper queue stability in a single-hop wireless multicast networks over erasure channels is analyzed. First, a queuing model consisting of several sub-queues is introduced. Under the queueing stability constraint, we adopt Lyapunov optimization model and define decision variables to derive a network coding based packet scheduling algorithm, which has significantly less complexity and shorter queue size compared with the existing solutions. Further, the proposed algorithm is modified to meet the requirements of time-critical data. Finally, the simulation results verify the effectiveness …
For a (single-source) multicast network, the size of a base field is the most known and studied algebraic identity that is involved in characterizing its linear solvability over the base field. In this paper, we design a new class $\mathcal{N}$ of multicast networks and obtain an explicit formula for the linear solvability of these networks, which involves the associated coset numbers of a multiplicative subgroup in a base field. The concise formula turns out to be the first that matches the topological structure of a multicast network and algebraic identities of a field other than size. It fu…
We consider the problem of multicasting information from a source to a set of receivers over a network where intermediate network nodes perform randomized network coding operations on the source packets. We propose a channel model for the non-coherent network coding introduced by Koetter and Kschischang in [6], that captures the essence of such a network operation, and calculate the capacity as a function of network parameters. We prove that use of subspace coding is optimal, and show that, in some cases, the capacity-achieving distribution uses subspaces of several dimensions, where the emplo…
A new coding scheme for general N-node relay networks is presented for unicast, multicast, and broadcast. The proposed distributed decode-forward scheme combines and generalizes Marton coding for single-hop broadcast channels and the Cover-El Gamal partial decode-forward coding scheme for 3-node relay channels. The key idea of the scheme is to precode all the codewords of the entire network at the source by multicoding over multiple blocks. This encoding step allows these codewords to carry partial information of the messages implicitly without complicated rate splitting and routing. This part…
Vector linear network coding (LNC) is a generalization of the conventional scalar LNC, such that the data unit transmitted on every edge is an $L$-dimensional vector of data symbols over a base field GF($q$). Vector LNC enriches the choices of coding operations at intermediate nodes, and there is a popular conjecture on the benefit of vector LNC over scalar LNC in terms of alphabet size of data units: there exist (single-source) multicast networks that are vector linearly solvable of dimension $L$ over GF($q$) but not scalar linearly solvable over any field of size $q' \leq q^L$. This paper in…
We present sufficient conditions for multicasting a set of correlated sources over cooperative networks. We propose joint source-Wyner-Ziv encoding/sliding-window decoding scheme, in which each receiver considers an ordered partition of other nodes. Subject to this scheme, we obtain a set of feasibility constraints for each ordered partition. We consolidate the results of different ordered partitions by utilizing a result of geometrical approach to obtain the sufficient conditions. We observe that these sufficient conditions are indeed necessary conditions for Aref networks. As a consequence o…
Minimal multicast networks are fascinating and efficient combinatorial objects, where the removal of a single link makes it impossible for all receivers to obtain all messages. We study the structure of such networks, and prove some constraints on their possible solutions. We then focus on the combination network, which is one of the simplest and most insightful network in network-coding theory. Of particular interest are minimal combination networks. We study the gap in alphabet size between vector-linear and scalar-linear network-coding solutions for such minimal combination networks and som…
