2015 Volume E98.B Issue 12 Pages 2419-2430
A threshold secret sharing scheme can realize reliable delivery of important content using redundant routes through a network. Furthermore, multicast delivery of threshold secret shared content can achieve efficient resource utilization thanks to the application of multicast and network coding techniques to multiple pieces of the content. Nevertheless, a tradeoff exists between reliability and efficiency if multicast content delivery uses network coding. This paper proposes a flexible multicast delivery scheme for threshold secret shared content that can control the tradeoff between reliability and efficiency. The proposed scheme classifies all the pieces obtained from the original content into multiple groups, and each group is subjected to network coding independently. An optimization procedure is proposed for the multicast delivery scheme, which involves two different heuristic delivery route computation methods applicable to large-scale networks. Evaluation results show that the optimized multicast delivery scheme adopting an appropriate grouping method and classifying the pieces into a suitable number of groups can minimize the required link bandwidth while satisfying a specified content loss probability requirement.
