A Trellis Connectivity Analysis of Random Linear Network Coding with Buffering

Abstract

Previous studies have proposed a practical network coding scheme for multicasting information in packet networks, which buffers received packets and outputs random linear mixtures of packets in the buffer. To analyze the performance of such a scheme, this paper introduces a continuous-time trellis, which models the packet transmissions in a practical asynchronous network. The continuous-time trellis represents an extension of a discrete-time trellis that was used in prior theoretical studies to model a synchronized network. The asymptotic throughput of the practical network coding scheme is characterized via an analysis of the asymptotic s-T connectivity in the trellis