Codecast: a network-coding-based ad hoc multicast protocol

Abstract

In this article we present CodeCast, a network-coding-based ad hoc multicast protocol. CodeCast is especially well-suited for multimedia applications with low-loss, low-latency constraints such as audio/video streaming. The key ingredient of CodeCast is random network coding, which transparently implements both localized loss recovery and path diversity with very low overhead. Simulation results show that in a typical setting, CodeCast yields a nearly 100 percent delivery ratio, as compared to a 94 percent delivery ratio by traditional multicast. More importantly, the overhead is reduced by as much as 50 percent