Network Coding Channel Virtualization Schemes for Satellite Multicast Communications
This work addresses the challenge of efficient multicast transmission to receivers with heterogeneous channel conditions in satellite communications, offering a practical solution for improving throughput.
The authors propose two network coding channel virtualization schemes for satellite multicast that virtualize multiple receivers into one, adapting to a network-level channel. In a GEO satellite scenario, the schemes outperform per-receiver point-to-point adaptive strategies.
In this paper, we propose two novel schemes to solve the problem of finding a quasi-optimal number of coded packets to multicast to a set of independent wireless receivers suffering different channel conditions. In particular, we propose two network channel virtualization schemes that allow for representing the set of intended receivers in a multicast group to be virtualized as one receiver. Such approach allows for a transmission scheme not only adapted to per-receiver channel variation over time, but to the network-virtualized channel representing all receivers in the multicast group. The first scheme capitalizes on a maximum erasure criterion introduced via the creation of a virtual worst per receiver per slot reference channel of the network. The second scheme capitalizes on a maximum completion time criterion by the use of the worst performing receiver channel as a virtual reference to the network. We apply such schemes to a GEO satellite scenario. We demonstrate the benefits of the proposed schemes comparing them to a per-receiver point-to-point adaptive strategy.