About Course
Course Summary Learning Objectives Course Goals Target Audience Schedule About the Lecturers Apply
Introduction to Network Coding [6.33s]
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Date: August 4-8, 2008| Tuition: $2,500 | Continuing Education Units (CEUs): 3.0
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* Course schedule, registration times, special events
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Course Summary
Network coding is a new area of networking, in which data is manipulated inside the network to increase throughput, reduce delay, and improve robustness. This field has recently found commercial applications in content distribution, peer-to-peer design, and enabling high-throughput wireless networks. The goal of this class is to provide participants with the theoretical and practical tools necessary not only to understand the field of network coding, but also to conduct independent, innovative work in the area. The curriculum reflects this mixture of theoretical foundations and practical approaches.
Fundamentals: Core concepts, understandings and tools (20%)
Latest Developments: Recent advances and future trends (60%)
Industry Applications: Linking theory and real-world (20%)
Lecture: Delivery of material in a lecture format (100%)
Introductory: Appropriate for a general audience (90%)
Specialized: Assumes experience in practice area or field (10%)
Learning Objectives
- Examine the algebraic principles underlying network coding.
- Discuss practical ways in which network coding improves throughput and reliability.
- Describe the connections between distributed random network coding and distributed compression.
- Analyze the use of network coding in data verification.
- Examine the current research trends and applications to wireless, security, and video over IP.
Course Goals
The goal of this class is to provide participants with the theoretical and practical tools necessary not only to understand the field of network coding, but also to conduct independent, innovative work in the area. The curriculum reflects this mixture of theoretical foundations and practical approaches. The first part of the course focuses on the algebraic principles underlying network coding. These principles do not require prior knowledge of advanced algebra or optimization.
The second part of the course discusses the role of network coding in improving throughput and reliability. It introduces distributed random network coding and discusses its applications. We formalize the problem of minimizing transmission cost and solve it in a distributed manner for both wireline and wireless systems. We explain the connection between this approach and traditional routing and ARQ. We also discuss example applications including data dissemination in peer-to-peer systems, high throughput wireless networks, and reliability and coverage in wireless networks.
The third part of the class discusses the use of network coding for compression. We explain the theoretical and practical connections between distributed random network coding and distributed compression. We also present a practical application of network coding for compressing correlated sensor data as they are transmitted toward the collection point.
The fourth part of the course discusses the security aspect of network coding. We discuss the use of network coding for detecting and correcting data corruption in wireless systems. We also present network-coding-based data verification in peer-to-peer systems. Finally, we provide a broad overview of different areas of research and innovation in network coding and its applications.
Target Audience
This course is of interest to networking and communication professionals in the areas of wireless networks, wireless communications, peer-to-peer systems, streaming media, sensor networks, satellite systems and other related fields. The course does not assume prior knowledge of advanced algebra or optimization.
Course schedule, registration times, special events
Class runs 9:30 am - 5:00 pm every day except Friday when it begins at
8:30 am and ends at 4:00 pm.
Registration is on Monday morning from 8:30 - 9:15 am.
Special events include a dinner for course participants and faculty on
Thursday night. Evening activities are included in tuition.
About The Lecturers
Muriel Médard is a Harold E. and Esther Edgerton Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT and Associate Director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. She was previously Assistant Professor at 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 a B.S. degree in EECS and one 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, Cambridge, MA. She serves as an Associate Editor for the Optical Communications and Networking Series of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, as an Associate Editor in Communications for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and a Guest Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory / ACM Transactions on Networking joint Special Issue on Information Theory and Networking. She has served as a Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology and as an Associate Editor for the Optical Society of America's Journal of Optical Networking. She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Career award. 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," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Volume 46 Issue 3, May 2000. She was also awarded the Best Paper Award for G. Weichenberg, V. Chan, M. Médard, "Reliable Architectures for Networks Under Stress", Fourth International Workshop on the Design of Reliable Communication Networks (DRCN 2003), October 2003, Banff, Alberta, Canada. She 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." Professor Médard's research interests are in the areas of reliable communications, particularly for optical and wireless networks, and in network coding to networks.
Dina Katabi is an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at MIT. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT, in 1998 and 2003. She is a leader in the area of computer networks and distributed systems. Her work focuses on wireless networks, network security, routing, and distributed resource management. She has award winning papers in ACM SIGCOMM and Usenix NSDI. She has been awarded the class of 1947 Career Development Chair in 2007, a Sloan Fellowship award in 2006, the NBX Career Development chair in 2006, and an NSF CAREER award in 2005. Her doctoral dissertation won an ACM Honorable Mention award and a Sprowls award for academic excellence.
