Erasure codes for broadcasting small files over erasure channels with low bandwidth

We evaluate the performance of two types of erasure coding schemes for broadcasting small files over erasure channels with low bandwidth. One type is based on maximal distance separable (MDS) codes, while the other type uses low-density parity-check codes. The channel model is relevant to a variety of applications, such as the bootstrapping phase of a wireless sensor network. Our results show that erasure codes of the former type require a smaller total transmission time than codes of the latter type when the number of packets is not large. In addition to classical Reed-Solomon codes, we also consider a family of MDS codes defined by Cauchy matrices and analyze their decoding complexities for erasure codes.