Cluster-based cooperative communication with network coding in wireless networks

Cooperative communication is a promising way to reduce probability of packet loss. The massive deployment of nodes in wireless sensor network renders such networks especially attractive for exploiting the advantage of cooperative diversity. Similarly, when used appropriately, network coding could also improve the probability of correct reception. In this paper, we introduce the cluster-based Cooperative Coding (CC) protocol, which is based on the integration of cooperative communication and network coding. In particular, in the CC protocol, network nodes are grouped into multiple clusters and nodes within the same cluster cooperate in transmitting and receiving packets. Such an integration reduces the amount of redundant information being forwarded to ensure high probability of correct end-to-end reception, when link-level retransmission of erroneous packets is not allowed (i.e., no link-level feedback). In particular, our analysis shows how to optimize the performance of the network by properly sizing the clusters. Compared to schemes without cooperation (whether with or without network coding), our simulation results demonstrate the significant performance improvement of the proposed scheme.