MAC Aware Random Network Coding for Wireless Unicast Flows

In this paper we propose random linear network coding (RLNC) as an efficient encoding scheme for unicast flows in single-hop ad hoc network and multi hop wireless mesh networks (WMN). The traditional approach for encoding unicast flows, known as inter-flow network coding (NC), assumes instant decoding and assumption of reliable feedback channel to minimizes the total number of transmissions. But under the practical consideration of the wireless medium access control (MAC), the gain of inter-flow NC technique suffers from higher latency due to the MAC overhead. We validate the result of our work on TelosB motes testbed. Our testbed implementation shows that the proposed approach of using RLNC reduces the transmission completion time by up to 40% compared to the inter-flow NC scheme for single-hop data dissemination and multi-hop wireless routing problems.