On MAC scheduling and packet combination strategies for practical random network coding

The present paper investigates practical algorithms to efficiently exploit random network coding for data delivery in multi-hop wireless networks. In the past few years, a great deal of work has been carried out to derive analytical results about network coding. However, only recently have researchers started to utilize the theoretical findings in practical settings. Network coding is a new paradigm for data delivery which proved to be very efficient. It is particularly suitable for wireless networks due to the inherent broadcast nature of the channel. Even though previous work dealt with practical schemes exploiting these new techniques, many issues concerning the coexistence of network coding and channel access mechanisms are still unsolved. In addition, it is still unclear how packets should he combined in order to get the highest benefits in terms of throughput, delay, and energy efficiency. Our work presents an accurate investigation of these aspects. In particular, we couple several MAC and scheduling schemes together with different network coding strategies, and compare them via extensive ns2 simulation. Finally, we propose a new timing strategy for the combination of data packets in random network coding.