On the capacity of non-coherent network coding

Abstract

The min-cut value towards a single receiver in a network with unit capacity edges can be achieved by routing a single bit. The multicast theorem in network coding shows that, the common min-cut value towards N ¿ 1 receivers can also be achieved using packets of length logN bits, if the operations the intermediate nodes perform are deterministically known at the receivers. We here calculate the capacity in the case where these operations are unknown, and characterize how the capacity depends on the min-cut value and the packet length.