Reliable and energy efficient single source broadcasting using network coding in wireless Ad-hoc networks

There are applications where important and critical data should be sent to all nodes in a wireless Ad-hoc network. Flooding and its variants are typically used to achieve this target. Network coding can also be used for broadcasting in such an environment. Energy consumption in the network, coverage and total delay are all important parameters that should be considered when an algorithm is evaluated. In this article, a reliable and energy efficient single source broadcasting algorithm is proposed based on network coding. This algorithm guarantees the delivery of desired messages to all network nodes, consumes less energy compared and reduces the total delay compared to other algorithms. This reliable protocol is based on a simple Acknowledge mechanism and uses the inherent properties of network coding to achieve its targets. Simulations are performed to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed algorithm.