Network coding assisted multicasting in multi-hop wireless networks

This paper presents a Network Coding Assisted Multicast Least Cost Anypath Routing (NC-MLCAR) scheme for packet transmission over a multi-hop wireless network. Our objective is to transmit packets efficiently from the source node to the destination set with the help of a selected forwarder set to reduce the expected number of transmissions for efficient network capacity usage. The forwarder set is selected using the earlier Multicast Least Cost Anypath Routing (MLCAR) algorithm. Network coded packets are then transmitted by allocating traffic efficiently between the nodes of the forwarder set while ensuring that each destination receives all the packets. Simulation results are presented for the cases when the packets receptions over different links are considered to be (i) independent and (ii) correlated. The extensive simulation results presented in the paper are compared with the corresponding MLCAR approach and other network coding schemes employed for multicasting like MORE and Pacifier. It is observed that the proposed NC-MLCAR scheme significantly reduces the expected number of overall transmissions in the network, for both independent links and correlated links, when compared to the existing multicasting schemes. Complexity analysis of NC-MLCAR is also presented.