Revolving Codes: Overhead and Computational Complexity Analysis

Revolving codes (ReC) are a new family of network codes that reduce signaling overhead and maintain high decoding probability, which is key in applications with small payloads, e.g., IoT, Industry 4.0. However, they have only been studied using simulations. We present i) the first exact mathematical model for the total overhead and decoding probability of a set of ReCs, and ii) efficient encoders and decoders. Our analysis shows that ReC decoders’ number of multiplications scales as $O(g)$ where $g$ is the number of data packets being combined. In practice, this translates in several orders of magnitude fewer multiplications, half the number of additions, and lower transmission overheads compared to RLNC.