CORE: a coding-aware opportunistic routing mechanism for wireless mesh networks [Accepted from Open Call]

Opportunistic routing is a new routing paradigm that takes advantage of the broadcast characteristic of a wireless channel for data delivery in a wireless mesh network. Network coding has recently emerged as a new coding paradigm that can significantly improve the throughput performance of a WMN. In this article we explore the combination of opportunistic routing and network coding for improving the performance of a WMN. We first review existing opportunistic routing and coding-aware routing protocols, respectively, classify these protocols based on different criteria, and discuss their merits and drawbacks. We then propose a coding-aware opportunistic routing mechanism that combines hop-by-hop opportunistic forwarding and localized inter-flow network coding for improving the throughput performance of a WMN. Through opportunistic forwarding, CORE allows the next-hop node with the most coding gain to continue the packet forwarding. Through localized network coding, CORE attempts to maximize the number of packets that can be carried in a single transmission. Simulation results show that CORE can significantly improve the throughput performance of a WMN as compared with existing protocols.