Inter-Flow and Intra-Flow Network Coding Aware Routing for Wireless Multi-hop Network

Network coding possesses great potentiality in promoting wireless multi-hop network throughput performance. Network coding applied in routings includes intra-flow network coding and inter-flow network coding. The aim of intra-flow network coding is to promote wireless transmissions reliability. For inter-flow network coding, its purpose is to reduce transmission number and rise network throughput. In this paper, an inter-flow and intra-flow network coding aware routing (RACR) is designed for wireless multi-hop network to make use of the benefits of both intra-flow and inter-flow network coding. RACR actively detects inter-flow coding opportunities on the basis of network coding condition in routing discovery in order to discover more coding opportunities. In addition, intra-flow network coding is exploited at source node of each flow to ensure correct inter-flow decoding and to avoid the dependence on the receiving of any specific packet. The simulation results on NS2 confirm that RACR can reduce transmissions times and rise the throughput of network.