Mar. 15 2007 2:00PM

Mar. 15 2007 3:30PM

Network coding, a new concept in network communications, is generating much interest in information theory, coding theory, networking, wireless communications, cryptography, and computer science. Consider a point-to-point communication network on which a number of information sources are to be multicast to certain sets of destination nodes. The problem is to characterize the maximum possible thruputs. Contrary to one’s intuition, network coding theory reveals that it is in general not optimal to regard the information to be multicast as a “fluid” which can simply be routed or replicated. Rather, by employing coding at the nodes, bandwidth can in general be saved. In this talk, we will give an overview of network coding and its application to network error correction. In particular, the network generalization of classical algebraic coding theory will be discussed.