What Is Network Coding?

The traditional way of transmitting data in communication networks is store-and-forward, that is, nodes other than the sending and receiving nodes of the data are only responsible for routing, and do not do any processing of the data content. The intermediate nodes play the role of repeaters.

Network coding was first proposed by Ahlswede et al. In a 2000 paper entitled "Network Information Flow" published in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. Network coding is mainly used in multicast networks, where coding is performed at the nodes to increase the information transmission rate. According to the traditional scheme, the nodes are generally routers using the "store-and-forward" mechanism. Because the traditional view is that "processing data on intermediate nodes will not bring benefits", the router does not process the information itself. Network coding processes data at the nodes, thereby improving the transmission rate of information.

The traditional way of transmitting data in communication networks is

The working principle of network coding is to transform different information into smaller "traces" of bits, and then

Researchers acknowledge that a mix of eavesdropping and xor bitstream concepts may raise concerns about security.

But MIT's Medard believes that network coding camouflages data during execution and can effectively carry the data, so it actually enhances the security of the information, compared to the tradition of transmitting undecipherable algorithm streams on the network.

Network coding allows network nodes to participate in data processing on the basis of traditional data forwarding, which has become an effective method to improve network throughput, robustness and security. Based on the introduction of the basic principles of network coding, the advantages and disadvantages of centralized and distributed network coding construction methods are compared, and the issues of synchronization, error correction, and encoding and decoding speed involved in practical network coding design are reviewed; furthermore, The latest applications of network coding in wireless networks, P2P systems, distributed file storage, and network security are summarized. Finally, the development trend of network coding theory and application research is analyzed and prospected. Designing a simple and efficient implementation mechanism and combining it with technologies in other fields such as channel coding and modulation, routing algorithms, queue scheduling, and streaming media technologies will be an important trend in the development of network coding. ^[1]