Network Coding in the Bidirectional Cross:A Case Study for the System Throughput and Energy

This paper presents a detailed performance evaluationof inter-session network coding in wireless meshed networksin terms of throughput and energy consumption. A full analyticalmodel is given for three different communication approaches forthe bidirectional cross topology using an IEEE 802.11 mediumaccess. One of the three approaches is pure relaying, while theother two approaches are using network coding with and withoutoverhearing of other flows. The main outcome of the paper isthat network coding without and with overhearing can increasethe throughput by the factor of two and four, respectively, forhigh load scenarios. Furthermore we show that the energy/bitratio is decreased by the use of network coding approaches,underlining that the added complexity of network coding paysoff when considering the overall system