Spatial-Temporal Network Coding Based on BATS Code

Erasure networks can usually benefit from both spatial and temporal network coding, i.e., coding across packets both from different network edges as well as from different time slots. In this letter, we propose a joint spatial and temporal networking scheme with finite temporal coding length by extending the batch sparse (BATS) code proposed by Yang and Yeung. For the original BATS code, the batch size is usually set as the temporal coding length M. With the proposed spatial-temporal BATS code, a larger batch size kM, with k being the min-cut of the network, is used so that the spatial network coding can be applied together with temporal network coding. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves significant throughput gain over the pure spatial or temporal network coding schemes.