Network Coding for Packet Radio Networks

We present methods for network-coded broadcast and multicast distribution of files in ad hoc networks of half-duplex packet radios. Two forms of network coding are investigated: fountain coding and random linear network coding. Our techniques exploit the broadcast nature of the wireless medium by permitting nodes to receive packets from senders other than their designated relays. File transfer is expedited by having multiple relays cooperate to forward the file to a destination. When relay nodes apply fountain coding to the file, they employ a simple mechanism to completely eliminate the possibility of sending duplicate packets to the recipients. It is not necessary for the nodes to transmit multiple packets simultaneously or to receive packets from multiple senders simultaneously. To combat the effects of time varying propagation loss on the links, each sender has the option to adapt the modulation format and channel-coding rate packet-by-packet by means of an adaptive transmission protocol. We use simulations to compare our network-coded file distributions with conventional broadcast and multicast techniques that use automatic repeat request (ARQ). Our numerical results show that the proposed strategies outperform ARQ-based file transfers by large margins for most network configurations. We also provide analytical upper bounds on the throughput of file distributions in networks comprising four nodes. We illustrate that our network-coded file-distribution strategies, when applied to the four-node networks, perform very close to the bounds