Linear Capacity Equivalence Between Multiple Multicast and Multiple Unicast

Abstract

An equivalence between multiple multicast and multiple unicast network codes is proven in a 2007 paper by Dougherty and Zeger. A related equivalence between multiple multicast and multiple unicast capacity for general (possibly noisy) memoryless networks is proven in a 2013 paper by the current authors. While the construction used in the proof from the earlier paper maps any linear code for one network to a linear code for the other network, the construction from the later paper does not necessarily preserve linearity. As a result, the 2013 result does not prove an equivalence between the capacity achievable by linear codes in memoryless multiple multicast and memoryless multiple unicast networks. The linear capacity equivalence for memoryless multiple multicast and multiple unicast networks is proven in this work.

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