A new scheme for packet coding in wireless sensor networks

We propose a new method for encoding information in wireless sensor networks. In addition to forwarding packets, routing nodes mix (i.e. code) packets from different sources to increase the information content for each transmission to neighbor nodes. We investigate the improvement in network throughput/lifetime via simulation programs. We implement the new method on different wireless sensor network topologies and show that coding and multicasting packets increase the network throughput and lifetime based on a prior knowledge of the local network topology. We report the method and its implementation. Simulation results for different topologies are included.