  Chunked codes are efficient random linear network coding (RLNC) schemes with
low computational cost, where the input packets are encoded into small chunks
(i.e., subsets of the coded packets). During the network transmission, RLNC is
performed within each chunk. In this paper, we first introduce a simple
transfer matrix model to characterize the transmission of chunks, and derive
some basic properties of the model to facilitate the performance analysis. We
then focus on the design of overlapped chunked codes, a class of chunked codes
whose chunks are non-disjoint subsets of input packets, which are of special
interest since they can be encoded with negligible computational cost and in a
causal fashion. We propose expander chunked (EC) codes, the first class of
overlapped chunked codes that have an analyzable performance,where the
construction of the chunks makes use of regular graphs. Numerical and
simulation results show that in some practical settings, EC codes can achieve
rates within 91 to 97 percent of the optimum and outperform the
state-of-the-art overlapped chunked codes significantly.
