The Science of Network Coding

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Network coding, an elegant and powerful concept introduced at the turn of the millennium, is expected to be a core enabling technology in future communication networks, revolutionizing the way information are communicated across geographically dispersed locations. Fundamental benefits of network coding arise in network capacity, error correction, energy efficiency, network security, storage efficiency, transmission delays, and algorithm complexity. While most existing studies in network coding theory are based on information theory and algebraic approaches, The Science of Network Coding is a research program that aspires to change the way people think about network coding, inviting new view points on this simple yet fundamental tool, resulting in new fundamental insights on the subject as well as easier and more effective applications in practice. As evident in its name, network coding is coding performed within a network, and naturally benefits from a computer science and mathematics treatment that explores the underlying network topology, and the associated algorithms, complexity and achievability issues. The Science of Network Coding fills such a gap in existing studies on network coding theory, complementing and competing with the information theory and algebraic approaches. Successes in the science of network coding will enable efficient and effective network coding algorithms for applications in the Internet, in wireless networks, and in distributed storage systems, constituting a key platform technology that further serves high-level applications that benefit from the communication of information, such as cloud computing, big data analytics, smart grids, bioinformatics, and environmental monitoring. Network coding can lead to efficient, robust and secure information gleaning and dissemination among such systems that depend upon and benefit from the exchange of information.