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Data Dissemination Problem in Wireless Networks

In this work, we formulate and study a data dissemination problem, which can be viewed as a generalization of the index coding problem and of the data exchange problem to networks with an arbitrary topology. We define $r$-solvable networks, in which data dissemination can be achieved in $r > 0$ communications rounds. We show that the optimum number of transmissions for any one-round communications scheme is given by the minimum rank of a certain constrained family of matrices. For a special case of this problem, called bipartite data dissemination problem, we present lower and upper graph-theoretic bounds on the optimum number of transmissions. For general $r$-solvable networks, we derive an upper bound on the minimum number of transmissions in any scheme with $\geq r$ rounds. We experimentally compare the obtained upper bound to a simple lower bound.