Network coding with remix qualification for multicasting in delay-tolerant networks

In delay-tolerant networks where connectivity between nodes is intermittent, replication-based delivery mechanisms are often employed to deliver messages in a store-carry-forward manner instead of end-to-end delivery techniques that are mainly used in traditional computer networks and mobile ad-hoc networks. However, multicasting with replication-based methodologies can induce considerable message traffic and longer delivery delay time, thereby being vulnerable upon system performance. This paper exploits the potential of network coding to design an efficient network-coding multicast mechanism in delay-tolerant networks. In this design, intermediate nodes in a network can perform a specific remix qualification approach which can not only alleviate the dependency problem among coded blocks but also generate more innovative coded blocks for restoring the original message by destination nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism is able to achieve cost-effective performance as compared with the naive network-coding and the replication-based delivery mechanisms for message multicasting in delay-tolerant networks.