A Layered Network Coding Solution for Incentives in Peer-to-Peer Live Streaming

We consider the design of an efficient streaming system for live video over peer-to-peer networks. Such a system must accommodate for large populations of heterogeneous users, behave robustly irrespective of user dynamics and ensure prescribed levels of quality of experience. Seeking a solution capable of addressing also the lack of incentives for peer-to-peer collaboration and the scarcity of certain video segments, we present a network coding based scheme for layered peer-to-peer live streaming. The key idea is to use layered coding as a tool to generate incentives and combine it with a specific network coding scheme to achieve efficient scheduling and delay minimization. The proposed solution is shown to achieve a short decoding delay, which further enables a smooth playback, while ensuring that users' decoding rate is proportional to their contribution to the system.