Instructor:
Muriel Medard, MIT, USA
Ralf Koetter, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

Abstract:
Network coding allows information from different streams to be processed or coded together at network nodes. This is a more general and powerful framework than the traditional store and forward approach. This tutorial will provide a comprehensive overview of this new and dynamic field. We first discuss routing, coding and compression in networks for capacity and robustness against permanent network failures. We show that a randomized linear coding approach can achieve, with high probability, robust, distributed routing and compression, without the need for any coordination among network nodes. We will show that for multiple access systems when the source, channel input, and channel output alphabets are identical finite fields, randomly designed linear network codes can achieve optimal source coding and channel coding. Next, we relate network coding to more traditional network flow analysis. We make a precise connection between an algebraic network flow formulation and the Edmonds matrix formulation for checking if bipartite graph has a perfect matching. Finally, we address robustness of networks, in particular, schemes for efficient recovery from link failures. Our research starts to develop a theory of network management that quantifies, in terms of network codes, the network management information needed fundamentally to direct such recovery schemes.

Instructor Bios:
Muriel Médard is a Harold E. and Esther Edgerton Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and a member of the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. From 1995 to 1998, she was a Staff Member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Optical Communications and the Advanced Networking Groups. Professor Médard received B.S. degrees in EECS and in Mathematics in 1989, a B.S. degree in Humanities in 1990, a M.S. degree in EE 1991, and a Sc D. degree in EE in 1995, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge. She serves as an Associate Editor for the Optical Communications and Networking Series of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications and as an Associate Editor in Communications for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. She has served as a Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology and as an Associate Editor for the OSA Journal of Optical Networking. Professor Médard's research interests are in the areas of reliable communications, particularly for optical and wireless networks. She was awarded the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award 2002 for her paper, "The Effect Upon Channel Capacity in Wireless Communications of Perfect and Imperfect Knowledge of the Channel,"  and   she was co- awarded the Best Paper Award for G. Weichenberg , V. Chan, M. Médard , "Reliable Architectures for Networks Under Stress" at the Fourth International Workshop on the Design of Reliable Communication Networks (DRCN 2003), October 2003. She received a NSF Career Award in 2001 and was co-winner of the 2004 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award , established in 1982 to honor junior faculty members "for distinction in research, teaching and service to the MIT community."

Ralf Koetter received the Diploma degree in electrical engineering from the Technical University Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany, in 1990 and the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Linköping University, Sweden. From 1996 to 1997, he was a Visiting Scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Laboratory, San Jose,CA. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Visiting Scientist at CNRS, Sophia Antipolis, France, from 1997 to 1998. He joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign in 1999, where he is currently an Assistant Professor with the Coordinated Science Laboratory. His research interests include coding and information theory and their application to communication systems. Dr. Koetter received an IBM Invention Achievement Award in 1997, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2000, and an IBM Partnership Award in 2001. He served as Associate Editor for coding theory and techniques for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS from 1999 to 2001. In 2000, he started a term as Associate Editor for coding theory of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION THEORY.