MT-NCOR: A practical optimization method for network coded opportunistic routing in WMN

Network coded opportunistic routing (NCOR) is a potential communication paradigm in wireless multi-hop networks (WMN) with lossy links. It leverages the multipath diversity of wireless networks and applies network coding to resist random erasures. Related optimization work minimizing transmission cost or maximizing throughput are based on the collision-free assumption, which either requires perfect schedule of MAC layer or only considers low traffic load and thus few packet collisions will occur. However, the assumption doesn´t hold true because real WMNs often need to support content distribution service and bear a high level of traffic load, and 802.11 protocols cannot guarantee an ideal schedule with no collisions. In order to achieve an optimal forwarding rate distribution and reduce conflicting packets, this paper proposes a throughput optimization algorithm which takes into consideration the channel capacity and interference between neighboring nodes. Based on this algorithm, we implement a practical NCOR protocol aiming at achieving maximum throughput named MT-NCOR. Through extensive experiments, we show that MT-NCOR outperforms the state-of-art NCOR protocols in both throughput and total cost, especially in networks backing high traffic loads.