Implementation and Performance Evaluation of Network Coding for Cooperative Mobile Devices

In this work a performance evaluation of network coding for cooperative wireless networks is carried out. Implementing network coding on commercially available mobile devices, the performance is presented in terms of throughput, delay and energy consumption. In contrast to purely cellular systems, where the mobile devices are only connected to the base station, in cooperative wireless networks, the mobile device, in addition to the cellular communication, establishes short range links to neighboring mobile devices within its proximity. In prior work it has been shown that the newly formed cooperative cluster, also referred as wireless grid, can offer each participating mobile device a better performance in terms of data rate, delay, robustness, security, and energy consumption in contrast to any stand alone device. To improve the performance within the cooperative cluster even more, network coding seems to be a promising technology as it decreases the number of packets to be interchanged among cooperative mobile devices leading to a decreased packet delay. The energy saved by fewer packet transmissions is confronted with the energy needed to carry out the network coding and related overhead. The findings of this paper show that network coding is always beneficial in terms of throughput and delay for the cooperative cluster.