Non-Asymptotic Analysis of Network Coding Delay

We present an expression for the delay distribution of Random Linear Network Coding over an erasure channel with a given loss probability. In contrast with previous contributions, our analysis is non- asymptotic in the sense that it is valid for any field size and any number of symbols. The results confirm that GF(16) already offers near-optimal decoding delay, whereas smaller field sizes (e.g. requiring only XOR operations) induce heavy tails in the delay distribution. A comparison with Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) techniques (with perfect feedback) is also included.