Theoretical Analysis of Various Software-Defined Multiplexing Codes

How to combine multiple data-streams for transmission in aggregate is a very interesting problem, especially for the emerging software-defined networks nowadays. The conventional packet-based protocols cannot provide the flexibility for combining data-streams in the ad hoc nature. If the number of data-streams changes over time, the existing packet formats cannot handle the transmission of multiple data-streams effectively. The effectiveness is measured by two performance metrics, namely coding efficiency and data-transmission intermittency. We propose a new software-defined multiplexing code (SDMC) approach, which can combine (multiplex) multiple data-streams easily and is much more effective than the conventional packet-based method. Three SDMC schemes (distributed, hierarchical, and hybrid) are compared theoretically and by simulation. A trade-off between these two performance metrics can be found when one selects one of the three SDMC schemes for combining multiple data-streams. The hierarchical SDMC scheme brings about the highest coding efficiency while the hybrid SDMC scheme suffers from the smallest overall intermittency.