CodeDrip: Improving data dissemination for wireless sensor networks with network coding

Abstract Network Coding is a technique that combines packets in the network with the potential to mitigate packet lost. In wireless communication systems, traditionally, dropped packets are recovered using retransmissions. By combining packets using network coding, it is possible to recover the transmitted information without needing to retransmit all the lost packets to all the nodes. In this paper, we present a show-case that applying Network Coding to data dissemination for Wireless Sensor Networks provides benefits even for small values. CodeDrip is a data dissemination protocol with Network Coding capability. Dissemination is typically used to query nodes, send commands, and reconfigure the network. CodeDrip utilizes Network Coding to improve energy efficiency, reliability, and speed of dissemination. While previous work in combining network coding and dissemination focused on bulk data dissemination, we optimize the design of CodeDrip for dissemination of small values. We perform extensive evaluation of CodeDrip on simulations and a large-scale testbed and compare against the implementations of Drip, DIP and DHV protocols. We evaluate with more than 350 physical sensor nodes. Results show that CodeDrip is faster, smaller and sends fewer messages than Drip, DHV and DIP protocols.