Two-Level Priority Coding for Resilience to Arbitrary Blockage Patterns

2025-08-23

AI Summary

To address persistent asymmetric link blockages—caused by mobility, interference, or adversarial attacks—in mission-critical domains such as military communications, this paper proposes a multi-level diversity coding framework for dual-priority data streams. Methodologically, it integrates superposition coding (achieving capacity bounds in most cases), lightweight network coding (reserved exclusively for boundary scenarios), and a three-edge-disjoint path architecture. Theoretically, it establishes the first complete characterization of the capacity region under dual-priority, three-level diversity; develops an equivalent analytical framework linking it to combinatorial network coding; and derives simplified coding conditions applicable to arbitrary numbers of disjoint paths. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the framework achieves high reliability, sub-millisecond end-to-end latency, and significantly reduced encoding/decoding complexity—even under complex, dynamic blockage patterns.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search
• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Data management and stream processing for Web, mobile and wireless applications
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Ultra-reliable low-latency communication is essential in mission-critical settings, including military applications, where persistent and asymmetric link blockages caused by mobility, jamming, or adversarial attacks can disrupt delay-sensitive transmissions. This paper addresses this challenge by deploying a multilevel diversity coding (MDC) scheme that controls the received information, offers distinct reliability guarantees based on the priority of data streams, and maintains low design and operational complexity as the number of network paths increases. For two priority levels over three edge-disjoint paths, the complete capacity region is characterized, showing that superposition coding achieves the region in general, whereas network coding is required only in a specific corner case. Moreover, sufficient conditions under which a simple superposition coding scheme achieves the capacity for an arbitrary number of paths are identified. To prove these results and provide a unified analytical framework, the problem of designing high-performing MDC schemes is shown to be equivalent to the problem of designing high-performing encoding schemes over a class of broadcast networks, referred to as combination networks in the literature.

Problem

• Ensures ultra-reliable low-latency communication under arbitrary blockages
• Provides distinct reliability guarantees for prioritized data streams
• Maintains low complexity while scaling with network paths

Innovation

• Multilevel diversity coding for reliability
• Superposition coding achieves capacity region
• Unified framework with broadcast networks equivalence