Wireless Broadcast with Network Coding in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks: DRAGONCAST

Abstract: Network coding is a recently proposed method for transmitting data, which has been shown to have potential to improve wireless network performance. We study network coding for one specific case of multicast, broadcasting, from one source to all nodes of the network. We use network coding as a loss tolerant, energy-efficient, method for broadcast. Our emphasis is on mobile networks. Our contribution is the proposal of DRAGONCAST, a protocol to perform network coding in such a dynamically evolving environment. It is based on three building blocks: a method to permit real-time decoding of network coding, a method to adjust the network coding transmission rates, and a method for ensuring the termination of the broadcast. The performance and behavior of the method are explored experimentally by simulations; they illustrate the excellent performance of the protocol.