Towards minimising the coefficient vector overhead in random linear Network Coding

Network Coding is a promising approach to increase network throughput and robustness to facilitate high volume traffic. Performing network coding in dynamic network structures requires transmitting coding coefficients for information sinks to decode network coded packets. Compared to the packet sizes used in practical networks, the size of coefficient vectors can be significant. This paper exploits the properties of small and medium sized networks and proposes a novel approach to minimise the coefficient vector size of network coded packets. Simulation results exhibit better compression of coefficient vectors over existing algorithms for small and medium sized networks.