Layered Network Coding and Hierarchical Network Coding for Peer-to-Peer Streaming

Abstract

This paper investigates Layered Network Coding (LNC) and Hierarchical Network Coding (HNC) for Peer-to-Peer live multimedia streaming. By combining the hierarchy of layered source coding with random network coding, we implement both LNC and HNC according to the importance order of encoded source layers. At the playback deadline, if currently received data are not enough to recover the original data completely, the most important layers can be recovered to maintain the smooth playback. A tuning scheme for the generating probabilities in HNC is also proposed, which takes into account both the priority and the length of each layer. Simulation results show that both LNC and HNC can recover the important layers earlier than the general network coding.