A Note on Practical Deployment Issues for Network Coding in the IEEE 802.16 MeSH Mode

Wireless network coding has the potential to enhance the capacity of wireless mesh networks (WMNs). However, most of the work considering the practical deployment of network coding in WMNs considers only IEEE 802.11 based medium access control (MAC) layers. The recent emergence of sophisticated MAC standards supporting WMNs (e.g. IEEE 802.16) make it necessary to view the deployment issues for network coding from a new perspective. This paper outlines the challenges for deploying network coding in sophisticated, reservation based MAC layers such as the IEEE 802.16 MeSH mode. We present simple yet efficient metrics to quantify and measure the gain which can be obtained via deployment of network coding in the MeSH mode. We also present extensions to the standard's reservation mechanisms to support network coding. Additionally, initial simulation results are provided demonstrating the proof-of-concept for the presented solutions thereby providing a framework for further investigation and deployment of wireless network coding in sophisticated MAC layers.