MuCAR: A greedy multi-flow-based coding-aware routing in wireless networks

It has been proved that network coding can optimize routing in wireless networks. Thus, in deterministic routing, coding is considered as an important factor for route selection. While the existing deterministic routing solutions detect paths with coding opportunities based on the two-flow coding, little attention has been drawn to the multi-flow situation. Coding multiple flows directly, however, can improve the coding benefit when multiple flows intersect at coding nodes. In this paper, we analyze the challenges of the multi-flow coding, and propose a Greedy Multi-flow-based Coding-aware Routing (MuCAR) protocol in wireless networks. The main idea is to define the decoding policy and the coding condition in the multi-flow environment, and code the multiple intersecting flows in a greedy way. Meanwhile, we discuss the interference issue in the multi-flow coding and its solution. We show that MuCAR can induce competitive performance in terms of increased coding benefit and decreased delay, which is verified by extensive simulations.