Information multicast in (pseudo-)planar networks: Efficient network coding over small finite fields

Network coding encourages in-network mixing of information flows for enhanced network capacity, particularly for multicast data dissemination. This work aims to explore properties in the underlying network topology for efficient network coding solutions, including efficient code assignment algorithms and efficient encoding/decoding operations that come with small base field sizes. The following cases of (pseudo-)planar types of networks are studied: outer-planar networks where all nodes colocate on a common face, relay/terminal co-face networks where all relay/terminal nodes co-locate on a common face, general planar networks, and apex networks.