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Network information flow
- IEEE TRANS. INFORM. THEORY
, 2000
"... We introduce a new class of problems called network information flow which is inspired by computer network applications. Consider a point-to-point communication network on which a number of information sources are to be mulitcast to certain sets of destinations. We assume that the information source ..."
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Cited by 1967 (24 self)
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We introduce a new class of problems called network information flow which is inspired by computer network applications. Consider a point-to-point communication network on which a number of information sources are to be mulitcast to certain sets of destinations. We assume that the information sources are mutually independent. The problem is to characterize the admissible coding rate region. This model subsumes all previously studied models along the same line. In this paper, we study the problem with one information source, and we have obtained a simple characterization of the admissible coding rate region. Our result can be regarded as the Max-flow Min-cut Theorem for network information flow. Contrary to one’s intuition, our work reveals that it is in general not optimal to regard the information to be multicast as a “fluid” which can simply be routed or replicated. Rather, by employing coding at the nodes, which we refer to as network coding, bandwidth can in general be saved. This finding may have significant impact on future design of switching systems.
XORs in the air: practical wireless network coding
- In Proc. ACM SIGCOMM
, 2006
"... This paper proposes COPE, a new architecture for wireless mesh networks. In addition to forwarding packets, routers mix (i.e., code) packets from different sources to increase the information content of each transmission. We show that intelligently mixing packets increases network throughput. Our de ..."
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Cited by 548 (20 self)
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This paper proposes COPE, a new architecture for wireless mesh networks. In addition to forwarding packets, routers mix (i.e., code) packets from different sources to increase the information content of each transmission. We show that intelligently mixing packets increases network throughput. Our design is rooted in the theory of network coding. Prior work on network coding is mainly theoretical and focuses on multicast traffic. This paper aims to bridge theory with practice; it addresses the common case of unicast traffic, dynamic and potentially bursty flows, and practical issues facing the integration of network coding in the current network stack. We evaluate our design on a 20-node wireless network, and discuss the results of the first testbed deployment of wireless network coding. The results show that COPE largely increases network throughput. The gains vary from a few percent to several folds depending on the traffic pattern, congestion level, and transport protocol.
Practical Network Coding
, 2003
"... We propose a distributed scheme for practical network coding that obviates the need for centralized knowledge of the graph topology, the encoding functions, and the decoding functions, and furthermore obviates the need for information to be communicated synchronously through the network. The resu ..."
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Cited by 462 (15 self)
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We propose a distributed scheme for practical network coding that obviates the need for centralized knowledge of the graph topology, the encoding functions, and the decoding functions, and furthermore obviates the need for information to be communicated synchronously through the network. The result is a practical system for network coding that is robust to random packet loss and delay as well as robust to any changes in the network topology or capacity due to joins, leaves, node or link failures, congestion, and so on. We simulate such a practical network coding system using the network topologies of several commercial Internet Service Providers, and demonstrate that it can achieve close to the theoretically optimal performance.
Fading relay channels: Performance limits and space-time signal design
- IEEE J. SELECT. AREAS COMMUN
, 2004
"... Cooperative diversity is a transmission technique where multiple terminals pool their resources to form a virtual antenna array that realizes spatial diversity gain in a distributed fashion. In this paper, we examine the basic building block of cooperative diversity systems, a simple fading relay ch ..."
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Cited by 445 (4 self)
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Cooperative diversity is a transmission technique where multiple terminals pool their resources to form a virtual antenna array that realizes spatial diversity gain in a distributed fashion. In this paper, we examine the basic building block of cooperative diversity systems, a simple fading relay channel where the source, destination and relay terminals are each equipped with single antenna transceivers. We consider three different TDMA-based cooperative protocols that vary the degree of broadcasting and receive collision. The relay terminal operates in either the amplify-and-forward (AF) or decode-and-forward (DF) modes. For each protocol, we study the ergodic and outage capacity behavior (assuming Gaussian code books) under the AF and DF modes of relaying. We analyze the spatial diversity performance of the various protocols and find that full spatial diversity (second-order in this case) is achieved by certain protocols provided that appropriate power control is employed. Our analysis unifies previous results reported in the literature and establishes the superiority (both from a capacity as well as a diversity point-of-view) of a new protocol proposed in this paper. The second part of the paper is devoted to (distributed) space-time code design for fading relay channels operating in the AF mode. We show that the corresponding code design criteria consist of the traditional rank and determinant criteria for the case of co-located antennas as well as appropriate power control rules. Consequently space-time codes designed for the case of co-located multi-antenna channels can be used to realize cooperative diversity provided that appropriate power control is employed.
Embracing wireless interference: Analog network coding
- in ACM SIGCOMM
, 2007
"... Traditionally, interference is considered harmful. Wireless networks strive to avoid scheduling multiple transmissions at the same time in order to prevent interference. This paper adopts the opposite approach; it encourages strategically picked senders to interfere. Instead of forwarding packets, r ..."
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Cited by 358 (10 self)
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Traditionally, interference is considered harmful. Wireless networks strive to avoid scheduling multiple transmissions at the same time in order to prevent interference. This paper adopts the opposite approach; it encourages strategically picked senders to interfere. Instead of forwarding packets, routers forward the interfering signals. The destination leverages network-level information to cancel the interference and recover the signal destined to it. The result is analog network coding because it mixes signals not bits. So, what if wireless routers forward signals instead of packets? Theoretically, such an approach doubles the capacity of the canonical relay network. Surprisingly, it is also practical. We implement our design using software radios and show that it achieves significantly higher throughput than both traditional wireless routing and prior work on wireless network coding. 1.
Network Coding for Distributed Storage Systems
, 2008
"... Distributed storage systems provide reliable access to data through redundancy spread over individually unreliable nodes. Application scenarios include data centers, peer-to-peer storage systems, and storage in wireless networks. Storing data using an erasure code, in fragments spread across nodes, ..."
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Cited by 338 (13 self)
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Distributed storage systems provide reliable access to data through redundancy spread over individually unreliable nodes. Application scenarios include data centers, peer-to-peer storage systems, and storage in wireless networks. Storing data using an erasure code, in fragments spread across nodes, requires less redundancy than simple replication for the same level of reliability. However, since fragments must be periodically replaced as nodes fail, a key question is how to generate encoded fragments in a distributed way while transferring as little data as possible across the network. For an erasure coded system, a common practice to repair from a node failure is for a new node to download subsets of data stored at a number of surviving nodes, reconstruct a lost coded block using the downloaded data, and store it at the new node. We show that this procedure is sub-optimal. We introduce the notion of regenerating codes, which allow a new node to download functions of the stored data from the surviving nodes. We show that regenerating codes can significantly reduce the repair bandwidth. Further, we show that there is a fundamental tradeoff between storage and repair bandwidth which we theoretically characterize using flow arguments on an appropriately constructed graph. By invoking constructive results in network coding, we introduce regenerating codes that can achieve any point in this optimal tradeoff.
Polynomial time algorithms for multicast network code construction
- IEEE TRANS. ON INFO. THY
, 2005
"... The famous max-flow min-cut theorem states that a source node can send information through a network ( ) to a sink node at a rate determined by the min-cut separating and. Recently, it has been shown that this rate can also be achieved for multicasting to several sinks provided that the intermediat ..."
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Cited by 316 (29 self)
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The famous max-flow min-cut theorem states that a source node can send information through a network ( ) to a sink node at a rate determined by the min-cut separating and. Recently, it has been shown that this rate can also be achieved for multicasting to several sinks provided that the intermediate nodes are allowed to re-encode the information they receive. We demonstrate examples of networks where the achievable rates obtained by coding at intermediate nodes are arbitrarily larger than if coding is not allowed. We give deterministic polynomial time algorithms and even faster randomized algorithms for designing linear codes for directed acyclic graphs with edges of unit capacity. We extend these algorithms to integer capacities and to codes that are tolerant to edge failures.
Trading structure for randomness in wireless opportunistic routing
, 2007
"... Opportunistic routing is a recent technique that achieves high throughput in the face of lossy wireless links. The current opportunistic routing protocol, ExOR, ties the MAC with routing, imposing a strict schedule on routers ’ access to the medium. Although the scheduler delivers opportunistic gain ..."
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Cited by 296 (7 self)
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Opportunistic routing is a recent technique that achieves high throughput in the face of lossy wireless links. The current opportunistic routing protocol, ExOR, ties the MAC with routing, imposing a strict schedule on routers ’ access to the medium. Although the scheduler delivers opportunistic gains, it misses some of the inherent features of the 802.11 MAC. For example, it prevents spatial reuse and thus may underutilize the wireless medium. It also eliminates the layering abstraction, making the protocol less amenable to extensions to alternate traffic types such as multicast. This paper presents MORE, a MAC-independent opportunistic routing protocol. MORE randomly mixes packets before forwarding them. This randomness ensures that routers that hear the same transmission do not forward the same packets. Thus, MORE needs no special scheduler to coordinate routers and can run directly on top of 802.11. Experimental results from a 20-node wireless testbed show that MORE’s median unicast throughput is 22 % higher than ExOR, and the gains rise to 45 % over ExOR when there is a chance of spatial reuse. For multicast, MORE’s gains increase with the number of destinations, and are 35-200 % greater than ExOR.
Wireless Network Information Flow: A Deterministic Approach
, 2009
"... In contrast to wireline networks, not much is known about the flow of information over wireless networks. The main barrier is the complexity of the signal interaction in wireless channels in addition to the noise in the channel. A widely accepted model is the the additive Gaussian channel model, and ..."
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Cited by 296 (42 self)
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In contrast to wireline networks, not much is known about the flow of information over wireless networks. The main barrier is the complexity of the signal interaction in wireless channels in addition to the noise in the channel. A widely accepted model is the the additive Gaussian channel model, and for this model, the capacity of even a network with a single relay node is open for 30 years. In this paper, we present a deterministic approach to this problem by focusing on the signal interaction rather than the noise. To this end, we propose a deterministic channel model which is analytically simpler than the Gaussian model but still captures two key wireless channel properties of broadcast and superposition. We consider a model for a wireless relay network with nodes connected by such deterministic channels, and present an exact characterization of the end-to-end capacity when there is a single source and one or more destinations (all interested in the same information) and an arbitrary number of relay nodes. This result is a natural generalization of the celebrated max-flow min-cut theorem for wireline networks. We then use the insights obtained from the analysis of the deterministic model to study information flow for the Gaussian wireless relay network. We present an achievable rate for general Gaussian relay networks and show that it is within a constant number of bits from the cut-set bound on the capacity of these networks. This constant depends on the number of nodes in the network, but not the values of the channel gains or the signal-to-noise ratios. We show that existing strategies cannot achieve such a constant-gap approximation for arbitrary networks and propose a new quantizemap-and-forward scheme that does. We also give several extensions of the approximation framework including robustness results (through compound channels), half-duplex constraints and ergodic channel variations.
