Network Coding Theory
Part I: Single Source
Foundations and Trends® in
Communications and Information Theory
Volume 2 Issue 4
DOI: 10.1561/0100000007I
Network Coding Theory
Part I: Single Source
Raymond W. Yeung
Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, whyeung@ie.cuhk.edu.hk
Shuo-Yen Robert Li
Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, bob@ie.cuhk.edu.hk
Ning Cai
The State Key Lab. of ISN, Xidian University, Xian, Shaanxi, 710071, China, caining@mail.xidian.edu.cn
Zhen Zhang
Department of Electrical Engineering-Systems, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2565, USA, zzhang@milly.usc.edu
Abstract
Store-and-forward had been the predominant technique for transmitting information through a network until its optimality was
refuted by network coding theory. Network coding offers a new paradigm for network communications and has generated abundant
research interest in information and coding theory, networking, switching, wireless communications, cryptography, computer
science, operations research, and matrix theory.
We review the foundational work that has led to the development of network coding theory and discuss the theory for the transmission
from a single source node to other nodes in the network. A companion issue discusses the theory when there are multiple source
nodes each intending to transmit to a different set of destination nodes.
References to ‘Part I’ and ‘Part II’ in this issue refer to Foundations and Trends
in Communications and Information Technology Volume 2 Numbers 4 and 5 respectively.