High-Throughput Network Coding Aware Routing in Time-Varying Multihop Networks

Abstract

Network coding aware routing (NCAR) has been emerging as an effective approach to create coding opportunities actively in multihop networks. To the best of our knowledge, most of the existing methods focus on a “static” design that considers coding opportunities based on fixed routes and invariable packet flows. This “static” way results in the optimality of routes suffering from a high sensitive behavior on both network topology and flow dynamic and, hence, reduces the throughput of routes in time-varying networks. To solve this problem, we propose a high-throughput NCAR scheme that supports dynamic multihop network connectivity and achieves throughput optimization, even with multiple variable flows. In the proposed scheme, a back-pressure-based NCAR algorithm is designed to push the flows dynamically into the nodes that have better network coding opportunities with no knowledge of network topology and flow dynamic. As a byproduct, the proposed method also exhibits a significantly improved delay performance relative to the traditional back-pressure algorithm. Simulation results reveal that the proposed scheme improves network capacity and alleviates end-to-end delay in heavy load networks.