NCMOB-MAC: A Network Coding-Based MAC Protocol with Mobility Support

In this paper, a novel Network Coding (NC)-aided Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol with mobility support (NCMOB-MAC) is presented. The proposed protocol is compatible with Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) techniques and can be applied in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). NCMOB-MAC proposes a new way of coordinating the communication between a sender, a moving destination and a set of fixed relay nodes. The relays employ different Contention Window (CW) sizes to assign priorities and optimize the NC opportunities. Extensive simulations have been carried out to evaluate the performance of the protocol and the results show an improvement in throughput and energy efficiency compared to conventional NC-aided MAC protocols.