Experiences with network coding within MANET field experiments

While network coding offers many theoretical properties that can be used to improve performance, practical experiences have been largely limited to simulation, emulation, and small-scale demonstrations. This paper reviews observations and results from recently conducted 802.11-based MANET field trials contrasting a network-coded protocol stack against a candidate baseline protocol suite. These field trials were based on an operational scenario with dismounts, vehicles, and airborne relay nodes conducting a search and rescue mission using video, chat, and situational awareness applications. This paper examines practical implementation issues such as CPU performance demands of network coding on an embedded system as well as observed traffic characteristics.