On average throughput and alphabet size in network coding

Chandra Chekuri, Christina Fragouli, Emina Soljanin

Abstract: We analyze a special class of configurations with h sources and N receivers to demonstrate the throughput benefits of network coding and deterministic code design. We show that the throughput benefits network coding offers can increase proportionally to radicN, with respect to the average as well as the minimum throughput. For this class of configurations we also show that there exists a deterministic coding scheme that realizes these benefits using a binary alphabet whereas randomized coding may require an exponentially large alphabet size