Routing Algorithm of Network Coding on Multicast

As a novel transmission mechanism to enhance the performance of multicast network, network coding (NC) has received much researcher concern recently. Due to its inherent characteristic, the process of constructing the routing paths in network coding is different from the traditional IP multicast based on replicating and forwarding. In this paper, we analyze the algebraic model of network coding and conclude that the goal of the routing problem in network coding is to build edge-disjoin paths from the source to each receiver. Using the idea of tree packing, we present a detailed routing algorithm for network coding based multicast. Simulations based on the algorithm show that, for network coding based multicast, performance in terms of achievable throughput and bandwidth consumption has been improved significantly with respect to the traditional IP multicast.