Data Dissemination in Wireless Broadcast Channels: Network Coding Versus Cooperation

Significant breakthroughs in wireless technology over the past decade have enabled implementation of third generation cellular systems capable of offering services traditionally more applicable to wireline networks. In particular, the growing use of cellular systems has lead to demand for broadcasting services requiring simultaneous data transmission to multiple users. Notable examples of such services include podcasting and distributions of software updates. It has been recently shown that network coding provides the maximum achievable throughput gains for multicast and broadcast wired networks.