Application of Network Coding and Compressed Sensing in Networking

Abstract

The growing adoption of data communication has resulted in dramatically higher capacity and performance. Communications engineers have historically optimized Physical (Phy)/Medium Access Control (MAC) layers to increase aggregate network throughput. However, in recent years, researchers have increasingly focused on understanding the other layers in networks, to improve their efficiency. The main objective of this work is to explore applications of recently developed ideas in coding and data acquisition for networking. Network coding has received considerable attention in recent years for its potential for achieving the theoretical upper bound (max-flow min-cut) of network resource utilization via the introduction of coding concepts at the network (IP) layer. Instead of just receiving a packet and forwarding it to the next suitable hop, intermediate nodes perform a linear operation upon receiving packets and broadcast the result to all of their neighbors. In this work, we exploit network coding for various applications in wired and wireless networks. First, we use NC to locate congested links inside a wired network. Then, we investigate the application of network coding in wireless relay networks and wireless broadcasting. Finally, we explore employing network coding for data sharing in wireless ad hoc networks. The idea of compressed sensing is based on the fact that, with some minimal prior knowledge about the data vector of a signal, it is possible to reconstruct that signal (efficiently)) from a very limited number of measurements (samples). Interest in the use of compressed sensing in many applications has grown quickly. In this work, we explore the application of CS in network monitoring and tomography. We will show that most networks routing matrices can be used as measurement matrices in compressed sampling. We provide an upper bound for delay recovery when compressed sensing is used to recover link delays inside networks. Finally, we provide an algorithm for designing a network routing matrix such that network monitoring (or tomography) puts a minimum burden on the network.