Network Coding with Limited Overhearing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Network Coding as a recently emerged concept in Communication Networks Research, has attracted a lot of attention in networking research community. Previous research on applying Network Coding in Wireless Sensor Networks, do not consider most crucial constraints inherent to sensor networks. Especially most of them assume overhearing of neighboring transmissions for free, which is unrealistic in practical sensor network environments where nodes have limited energy. Therefore these applications fail to make an impact on real world sensor network deployments. In some sensor networking scenarios it is possible to manipulate overhearing in a controlled manner. In this research we apply network coding in to improve throughput of a Time Division Multiple Access(TDMA) based Medium Access Control(MAC) protocol called GINMAC , manipulating overhearing appropriately. Our results show that network coding can improve the throughput while trading owith other network performance characteristics like reliability and power consumption.