Priority-based broadcasting of sensitive data in error-prone wireless networks

Providing reliable transmission in wireless communication networks is an important problem which is typically addressed using feedback and acknowledgment messages. In the networks where using feedbacks is not possible, such as real-time systems, an alternative approach is to maximize the possible gain that the destination nodes are expected to receive. In this paper, we consider transmission of data with different priorities, and study the problem of maximizing the total gain in the case that partial data retrieval is acceptable. We propose an optimal solution that benefits from network coding. We also consider the case of burst errors and discuss how can we make our proposed method robust to this type of error. We evaluate our proposed priority-based data transmission method using both simulations and results from the implementation on a USRP testbed.