The invention belongs to the technical field of network coding and specifically relates to a design method for sliding window BATS codes (Batched Sparse Codes). According to the method, on the basis of the BATS codes, a sliding window policy is introduced, long codes are segmented into a plurality of short code blocks, and a low delay requirement in an unmanned aerial vehicle cluster network is solved in a window-by-window coding, window-by-window decoding and window-by-window outputting mode. According to the sliding window BATS codes, feedback does not need to be added among windows. After sufficient data packets are sent, the windows are moved downward. After original input data packets of overlapped parts among the windows are decoded completely at a decoding end, decoding of coding packets in a previous window or previous windows is promoted. More importantly, according to the sliding window policy, lengths of the original data packets are increased virtually, so decoding performance is unlikely to be reduced greatly. Through utilization of the design method, the BATS codes can be applied to the unmanned aerial vehicle cluster network, communication reliability is ensured, anddelay performance can be relatively improved.