Rate control for network coding based multicast: a hierarchical decomposition approach

In this work we consider the rate control issue for network coding based multicast among multiple sessions, which can be formulated as a network utility maximization problem. To solve the problem we propose a distributed optimization decomposition approach, which is different from the previous work in the literature in that (1) it is a hierarchical decomposition approach where the primal problem is decomposed recursively, until an independent rate control module is obtained and the decomposed subproblems can be solved by the distributed max-flow algorithm and we emphasize the layered functionality allocation of decomposed subproblems following the framework of "Layering as Optimization Decompositions"; (2) we first separate the primal problem by relaxing the capacity constraint among sessions; (3) to implement end-to-end control, we separate the independent rate control module at end node from the operation in the interior of the network. In this work we intend to propose not only a rate control algorithm but also a possible choice of network architecture for network coding based communication with rate control capability.