Joint routing, scheduling, and physical network coding in fixed wireless multihop networks

We study joint routing, scheduling, and physical network coding (PNC) in fixed wireless multihop networks under a physical interference model. The objective is to quantify the throughput gain provided by PNC in wireless mesh networks. We formulate a cross-layer optimization framework to determine the optimal max-min throughput of the flows and the optimal configuration of the routing and scheduling parameters in multi-hop wireless networks with PNC. We solve the problem for several small to medium size wireless mesh networks. Our numerical results show that PNC provides a significant throughput gain in wireless mesh networks at low transmission power. This throughput gain is significantly higher than the throughput gain of the XOR-like network coding.