Dynamic Slotted Network Coding Protocol

International audienceNetwork Coding (NC) is a technique that enhances the performance of wireless networks by increasing the throughput and decreasing the delay. The basic idea is to exploit the mixing of signals that occurs naturally when end nodes transmit at the same time. The main challenge stands for a medium access scheduling allowing synchronized coordination between the nodes involved in that coded transmission. Most of the proposed Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols are based either on the CSMA/CA or the TDMA scheduling. The CSMA/CA based protocols suffer from synchronization issues, while the TDMA based protocols suffer from the delay due to their static design. This paper introduces a new NC MAC protocol called Dynamic Slotted Network Coding Protocol (DSNCP) based on a time scheduling to avoid the synchronization issue and uses a new design that makes the data slot assignments dynamic in order to reduce the delay. Simulation results show a significant performance gain of the proposed DSNCP compared to CSMA/CA and static TDMA protocols in terms of throughput and delay. In some scenarios, the throughput gain of the DSNCP could reach 130% and 100% compared to TDMA and CSMA/CA, respectively, and the delay gain could reach 80% and 40% compared to TDMA and CSMA/CA, respectively