Network routing for streaming applications using systematic rateless codes

Rateless Codes are effective in reducing the costs of retransmissions over erasure channels. Some rateless codes have systematic leading parts which have been shown in the literature to enhance their performance. The systematic part allows a node to start transmitting packets as soon as they are received without waiting for the entire multi-packet message to be decoded. This will naturally reduce the end-to-end delay which is critical for streaming applications. Using systematic rateless codes, this paper proposes a network routing algorithm to reduce streaming delays. The algorithm is easy to analyze and implement. Its performance is studied and compared against the existing algorithms through simulations in network scenarios where the nodes use systematic rateless codes for communication.