Multicast Network Coding and Field Sizes

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 over GF(7) but not over GF(8), and another multicast network linearly solvable over GF(16) but not over GF(17); (ii) There is a multicast network linearly solvable over GF(5) but not over such GF($q$) that $q > 5$ is a Mersenne prime plus 1, which can be extremely large; (iii) A multicast network linearly solvable over GF($q^{m_1}$) and over GF($q^{m_2}$) is \emph{not} necessarily linearly solvable over GF($q^{m_1+m_2}$); (iv) There exists a class of multicast networks with a set $T$ of receivers such that the minimum field size $q_{min}$ for a linear solution over GF($q_{min}$) is lower bounded by $\Theta(\sqrt{|T|})$, but not every larger field than GF($q_{min}$) suffices to yield a linear solution. The insight brought from this work is that not only the field size, but also the order of subgroups in the multiplicative group of a finite field affects the linear solvability of a multicast network

Network coding for non-uniform demands

Non-uniform demand networks are defined as a useful connection model, in between multicasts and general connections. In these networks, each sink demands a certain number of messages, without specifying their identities. We study the solvability of such networks and give a tight bound on the number of sinks for which the min cut condition is sufficient. This sufficiency result is unique to the non-uniform demand model and does not apply to general connection networks. We propose constructions to solve networks at, or slightly below capacity, and investigate the effect large alphabets have on the solvability of such networks. We also show that our efficient constructions are suboptimal when used in networks with more sinks, yet this comes with little surprise considering the fact that the general problem is shown to be NP-hard

Path Gain Algebraic Formulation for the Scalar Linear Network Coding Problem

In the algebraic view, the solution to a network coding problem is seen as a variety specified by a system of polynomial equations typically derived by using edge-to-edge gains as variables. The output from each sink is equated to its demand to obtain polynomial equations. In this work, we propose a method to derive the polynomial equations using source-to-sink path gains as the variables. In the path gain formulation, we show that linear and quadratic equations suffice; therefore, network coding becomes equivalent to a system of polynomial equations of maximum degree 2. We present algorithms for generating the equations in the path gains and for converting path gain solutions to edge-to-edge gain solutions. Because of the low degree, simplification is readily possible for the system of equations obtained using path gains. Using small-sized network coding problems, we show that the path gain approach results in simpler equations and determines solvability of the problem in certain cases. On a larger network (with 87 nodes and 161 edges), we show how the path gain approach continues to provide deterministic solutions to some network coding problems.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (May 2010

Quasi-linear Network Coding

We present a heuristic for designing vector non-linear network codes for non-multicast networks, which we call quasi-linear network codes. The method presented has two phases: finding an approximate linear network code over the reals, and then quantizing it to a vector non-linear network code using a fixed-point representation. Apart from describing the method, we draw some links between some network parameters and the rate of the resulting code

Closure Solvability for Network Coding and Secret Sharing

Network coding is a new technique to transmit data through a network by letting the intermediate nodes combine the packets they receive. Given a network, the network coding solvability problem decides whether all the packets requested by the destinations can be transmitted. In this paper, we introduce a new approach to this problem. We define a closure operator on a digraph closely related to the network coding instance and we show that the constraints for network coding can all be expressed according to that closure operator. Thus, a solution for the network coding problem is equivalent to a so-called solution of the closure operator. We can then define the closure solvability problem in general, which surprisingly reduces to finding secret-sharing matroids when the closure operator is a matroid. Based on this reformulation, we can easily prove that any multiple unicast where each node receives at least as many arcs as there are sources solvable by linear functions. We also give an alternative proof that any nontrivial multiple unicast with two source-receiver pairs is always solvable over all sufficiently large alphabets. Based on singular properties of the closure operator, we are able to generalize the way in which networks can be split into two distinct parts; we also provide a new way of identifying and removing useless nodes in a network. We also introduce the concept of network sharing, where one solvable network can be used to accommodate another solvable network coding instance. Finally, the guessing graph approach to network coding solvability is generalized to any closure operator, which yields bounds on the amount of information that can be transmitted through a network