Combining opportunistic routing and network coding: A multi rate approach

The inherent characteristics of the wireless channel, such as broadcast communication and high variability in channel quality, make it difficult to achieve high throughput in wireless mesh networks (WMNs). However, some innovative techniques like wireless inter-flow network coding and opportunistic routing leverage the broadcast nature of the wireless channel to improve the throughput. In addition, in order to cope with channel quality variation, the transmission rate can be adjusted using a rate adaptation algorithm. In this paper, we study how these fundamental techniques collaborate and how they can be combined into an integrated solution. We suggest Multi Rate Opportunistic Routing-aware Network Coding (MRORNC) as an integrated cross-layer approach that jointly determines the coded packet, potential next hops, and transmission rate using a novel metric. The simulation results demonstrate that the suggested approach can achieve higher throughput compared to the rate-oblivious opportunistic routing-aware network coding solutions.