LT network codes: low complexity network codes

Abstract

This paper proposes LTNC, a new recoding algorithm to build low complexity network codes. At the core of LTNC is a decentralized version of LT codes that allows the use of fast belief propagation decoding instead of high complexity Gauss reduction used by random linear network coding (RLNC). In the context of a peer-to-peer content dissemination application, we observe that LTNC trades advantageously communication optimality of RLNC with decoding cost as it incurs only 38.5% of bandwidth overhead for a gain of almost 99% in CPU cycles.