Matroidal networks were introduced by
Doughertyet al. and have been well studied in the recent
past. It was shown that a network has a scalar linear network
coding solution if and only if it is matroidal associated with
a representable matroid. A particularly interesting feature of
this development is the ability to construct (scalar and vector)
linearly solvable networks using certain classes of matroids.
Furthermore, it was shown through the connection between
network coding and matroid theory that linear network coding
is not always sufficient for general network coding scenarios.
The current work attempts to establish a connection between
matroid theory and network-error correcting and detecting
codes. In a similar vein to the theory connecting matroids and
network coding, we abstract the essential aspects of linear
network-error detecting codes to arrive at the definition of a
matroidal error detecting network(and similarly, amatroidal error
correcting network abstracting from network-error correcting
codes). An acyclic network (with arbitrary sink demands) is
then shown to possess a scalar linear error detecting (correcting)
network code if and only if it is a matroidal error detecting
(correcting) network associated with a representable matroid.
Therefore, constructing such network-error correcting and
detecting codes implies the construction of certain representable
matroids that satisfy some special conditions, and vice versa.
We then present algorithms that enable the construction of
matroidal error detecting and correcting networks with a
specified capability of network-error correction. Using these
construction algorithms, a large class of hitherto unknown
scalar linearly solvable networks with multisource, multicast,
and multiple-unicast network-error correcting codes is made
available for theoretical use and practical implementation,
with parameters, such as number of information symbols,
number of sinks, number of coding nodes, error correcting
capability, and so on, being arbitrary but for computing power
(for the execution of the algorithms). The complexity of the
construction of these networks is shown to be comparable with
the complexity of existing algorithms that design multicast
scalar linear network-error correcting codes. Finally, we also
show that linear network coding is not sufficient for the general
network-error correction (detection) problem with arbitrary
demands. In particular, for the same number of network errors,
we show a network for which there is a nonlinear network-error