Practical network coding solutions for multimedia multicast

在宽带互联网和蜂窝网络的推动下，无处不在的信息访问极大地改善了我们生活的方方面面。对在线视频下载、互联网电视、广播、电话会议、无线内容递送等的需求增加，导致对网络资源的使用不断增加。例如，2012年至2017年，移动视频使用量预计将增长16倍，占移动数据总流量的三分之二以上。考虑到这种快速增长，需要克服一些技术障碍，否则我们现有网络基础设施的能力很快就会不堪重负。 由于网络编码的新想法，无需增加基础设施，就可以实现比传统路由高得多的数据速率。提高能源和带宽效率以及对网络动态的稳健性是网络代码的众多优势之一。遗憾的是，要使网络编码适应其潜在的应用，在理论和实践上都存在许多障碍。当前提出的网络编码要么存在较高的计算复杂性，要么存在较大的接收开销。 在这个项目中，我们开发了实用的多媒体网络编码解决方案，并将研究它们与现有网络协议的集成。例如，将研究具有特定要求(例如，部分恢复和严格的延迟约束)的多媒体业务的设计。 我们的行业合作伙伴TELUS公司报告称，智能手机用户数量大幅增加，其中多媒体是主要的流量来源。此外，得益于他们极为成功的互联网电视(Optik TV)，其电视用户数量也大幅增长了33%。因此，我们的工业合作伙伴可以直接受益于在该项目期间开发的技术。 加拿大一直是信息和通信技术世界的主要国际参与者。加拿大的信息和通信技术部门由大约30,000家公司组成，这些公司直接创造了约5%的国内生产总值。我们创造的任何知识产权都将使加拿大的ICT公司受益，增强它们的全球竞争力。

Facilitated by broadband Internet and cellular networks, ubiquitous access to information has tremendously improved every aspect of our lives. Increased demand for on-line video downloads, internet TV, broadcasting, teleconferencing, wireless content delivery, etc., is leading to an ever increasing usage of network resources. For example, mobile video usage is predicted to increase 16-fold between 2012 and 2017, accounting for more than two thirds of total mobile data traffic. Considering this rapid growth, a number of technical barriers are to be tackled or the capacity of our existing network infrastructure will soon be overwhelmed. Thanks to the novel idea of network coding, much higher data rates than conventional routing can be achieved without a need for increasing infrastructure. Increased energy and bandwidth efficiency and robustness to network dynamics are among the many benefits of network codes. Unfortunately, there exist many theoretical and practical obstacles in adapting network coding to its potential applications. Current proposed network codes either suffer from high computational complexity or significant reception overhead. In this project, we develop practical network coding solutions for multimedia and we will study their integration with the current network protocols. For example, design for multimedia traffic with its specific requirements (e.g., partial recovery and stringent delay constraints) will be studied. Our industry partner, TELUS Corporation, reports a huge increase in the number of smartphone subscribers, where multimedia is a major source of traffic.Also, a significant 33% increase is reported for the number of their TV subscribers, thanks to their extremely successful Internet TV (Optik TV). Thus, our industrial partner can directly benefit from the technology developed during this project. Canada has been a major international player in the world of ICT. The Canadian ICT sector consists of about 30,000 companies that directly generate about 5% of the national GDP. Any intellectual property generated by us would benefit the Canadian ICT companies, reinforcing their global competitiveness.