Coding Schemes for Line Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces coding schemes for line networks with erasure channels, focusing on their complexity, delay, rate, memory, and adaptability, and discusses extensions to more general network topologies.

Contribution

It proposes new coding schemes tailored for line networks, analyzing their performance and resource requirements, and explores their potential extension to complex networks.

Findings

Proposed coding schemes achieve near-min-cut capacity.

Schemes vary in complexity, delay, and memory requirements.

Extensions to general networks are feasible.

Abstract

We consider a simple network, where a source and destination node are connected with a line of erasure channels. It is well known that in order to achieve the min-cut capacity, the intermediate nodes are required to process the information. We propose coding schemes for this setting, and discuss each scheme in terms of complexity, delay, achievable rate, memory requirement, and adaptability to unknown channel parameters. We also briefly discuss how these schemes can be extended to more general networks.