Network Coding with Multi-Generation Mixing: Analysis and Applications for Video Communication

Network Coding (NC) is an emerging networking approach that improves overall throughput over packet networks. Meanwhile, traditional NC approaches have limited advantages under certain network conditions, such as sparse connectivity and high losses; this is especially true for real-time applications. In this paper, we propose and analyze a generalized approach of network coding, which is based on Multi-Generation Mixing (MGM). As we demonstrate in this paper, MGM-based NC improves the performance of real-time data communications under scenarios of sparse connectivity and high loss rates. Under such scenarios, practical network coding not only fail to achieve any improvements; on the contrary it may lead to performance degradations. The analytical as well as the simulation studies we present in this paper show major improvements that can be achieved in situations where practical network coding is not a viable option. In particular, we demonstrate major gains in PSNR video quality under MGM-based network coding.