An iterative routing algorithm for energy minimization in coded wireless networks

Energy saving is important for many wireless devices. In a multi-hop wireless network with multiple sessions, XOR network coding can be applied to opposite traffic flows so as to reduce the number of packet transmissions, which in turn reduce transmission energy. Such a change in packet forwarding, however, impacts the design of traffic routing. Traditional routing algorithms, which typically aim at finding shortest paths between source and destination nodes, may no longer work well. In this paper, an iterative routing algorithm is proposed, which favors paths that can provide more pair-wise XOR network coding opportunities. Simulation results show that this algorithm integrates well with the XOR forwarding method and can reduce energy cost significantly when compared with traditional shortest-path routing, with and without network coding.