Unified Frameworks for the Constructions of Variable-Rate Linear Network Codes and Variable-Rate Static Linear Network Codes

This paper proposes unified frameworks for the constructions of variable-rate linear network codes and variable-rate static linear network codes respectively. To implement variable-rate network codes of any type constructed by these frameworks, every intermediate node in the network needs to store only one local encoding kernel. When the transmission rate varies, the network-coding operations performed at every intermediate node remain unchanged, even in the networks with link failures.