Network coding vs. erasure coding: Reliable multicast in ad hoc networks

Providing reliable and efficient networking services in wireless ad hoc networks is extremely challenging due to high mobility and unstable wireless nature: a significant number of packets can be corrupt or lost. To increase the reliability in packet erasure networks, various coding schemes have been proposed. Network coding (NC) and erasure coding (EC) are such well-known coding techniques recently considered to be used for multicast communications. Both schemes are able to encode original packets into a potentially infinite data stream of encoded packets. Receivers can reconstruct the original packets once they have collected a certain number of encoded packets. The main difference of these schemes is that NC allows intermediate nodes to encode packets they have received so far whereas EC is an end-to-end coding which allows only sources to encode. Both schemes are considered to be able to provide excellent ammunition against erasure networks. However, dasiathe jury is still outpsila regarding which scheme is suitable in ad hoc networks. In this paper, based on simulations and analysis study, we present information on the performance of both schemes which may be useful for selecting the better coding scheme.