On Minimizing Multicast Completion Delay for Instantly Decodable Network Coding

In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the mean completion delay in wireless multicast for instantly decodable network coding. We first formulate the problem as a stochastic shortest path (SSP) problem. Although finding the optimal selection policy using SSP is intractable, we use this formulation to draw the theoretical properties of efficient selection algorithms. Based on these properties, we propose a simple online selection algorithm that efficiently minimizes the mean completion delay of a frame of multicast packets with a similar computational complexity as the random and greedy selection algorithms. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm indeed outperforms these random and greedy selection algorithms.