Distributed Network Coding-Aware Routing Protocol Incorporating Fuzzy-Logic-Based Forwarders in Wireless Ad hoc Networks

Abstract

Network coding, as one of the foremost techniques boosting the performance of the wireless networks, has recently acquired notable popularity. As a result, a new category of routing approaches named as the coding-aware routing scheme, has been emerged. In such routing schemes, the possible coding opportunities are identified prior to the path establishment, and paths containing coding opportunities are prioritized to be established. Motivated by the appreciable efficiency of the coding-aware routing schemes, this paper leverages fuzzy logic and proposes a novel coding-aware routing approach alluded to as Fuzzy-logic-based Network Coding-aware Routing (FNCR) protocol. Notwithstanding a number of previously proposed coding-aware routing schemes which merely endeavor to establish paths including more coding opportunities, FNCR suggests embedding a purposefully designed fuzzy system in each node in order to calculate the overall desirability of the nodes in terms of some momentous factors such as the coding capability, the remaining energy, and the workload of the node. In addition to a new routing metric which utilizes the calculated overall desirability, the previously proposed coding conditions are modified such that more possible coding opportunities can now be identified. Simulation results demonstrate that FNCR outperforms the formerly proposed approaches employing network coding, in terms of throughput, end to end delay, packet delivery ratio, and lifetime of the network.