Practical Limits of Rateless Codes in Multihop Relay Networks

Rateless code properties ideally suit multi-node transmissions and have been extensively employed in multihop delay tolerant networks (DTNs). However conventional multihop networks, where the transmission proceeds from one-hop to the next, may lead to starvation of some nodes with good channel conditions. In such instances, the overall latency can be alleviated by cooperation among the forwarding nodes. This paper analytically quantifies the latency of both conventional and cooperative rateless coded delay tolerant multihop networks by deriving the exact closed form equations for the channel usage. These are verified and supported with results from extensive simulation studies.