Encoding for Degraded Broadcast Channels and Resource Allocation for Content Distribution in Peer-to-Peer Networks

of the Dissertation Encoding for Degraded Broadcast Channels and Resource Allocation for Content Distribution in Peer-to-Peer Networks by Bike Xie Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering University of California, Los Angeles, 2010 Professor Richard D. Wesel, Chair The broadcast communication network is a telecommunication network with exactly one source and multiple receivers. This dissertation presents results regarding to two different broadcast communication systems: broadcast channels (BC) and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The BC is a single-hop communication network consisting of one transmitter and multiple receivers which observe the transmitted signal through different channels and decode their individual messages. In contrast, the P2P network 1 is a multi-hop broadcast or multi-cast communication network consisting of one source node, possibly some relay nodes, and multiple receivers which download transmitted packages through different routings and decode a common message. This first part of the dissertation explores encoding schemes for degraded A general P2P network can simultaneously contain multiple multi-cast communications, and hence have more than one source nodes. In this dissertation, we focus on the simplified model of the P2P network which contains only one broadcast or multi-cast communication.