Scalable broadcast with network coding in heterogeneous networks

This article studies the scalable broadcast scheme realized with the joint application of layered source coding, unequal error protection (UEP) and random network coding from the theoretical point of view. The success probability for any non-source node in a heterogeneous network to recover the most important layers of the source data is deduced. This probability proves that in this broadcast scheme every non-source node with enough capacity can always recover the source data partially or entirely as long as the finite field size is sufficiently large. Furthermore, a special construction for the local encoding kernel at the source node is proposed. With this special construction, an increased success probability for partial decoding at any non-source node is achieved, i.e., the partial decodability offered by the scalable broadcast scheme is improved.