Source-Coded Online Algorithm for Multicast Subgraph Construction

Abstract

Multicast remains a fundamental mechanism for scalable content distribution, yet existing approaches face critical limitations. Traditional multicast trees suffer from path redundancy and inefficient utilization of network resources, while network coding, although capacity-achieving, incurs significant computational overhead and deployment challenges. In this paper, we introduce a source-coded multicast framework that exploits maximum-flow decomposition to construct multiple disjoint or partially overlapping paths from the source to all receivers. Our scheme incorporates a novel path redirection mechanism: when multiple overlaps occur between receiver flows, downstream paths are realigned at the first intersection, ensuring loop-free delivery while maximizing overall throughput. We develop algorithms for path construction, overlap detection, and iterative refinement of multicast subgraphs, and analyze their computational complexity. Through extensive evaluation on synthetic and real network topologies, we demonstrate that the proposed method consistently approaches the throughput of network coding with substantially lower encoding and decoding complexity, while significantly outperforming multicast tree constructions in terms of fairness, robustness to link failures, and delivery efficiency. These results position source-coded multicast as a practical and scalable solution for next-generation networks requiring high-throughput and adaptive group communication.