Wireless Network Coding via Modified 802.11 MAC/PHY: Design and Implementation on SDR

TL;DR

This paper proposes practical modifications to the 802.11 MAC and PHY layers on SDR platforms to enable wireless network coding, demonstrating a throughput increase of 20-30% through lab experiments.

Contribution

It introduces novel, pragmatic modifications to 802.11 MAC/PHY layers on SDR to support wireless network coding and evaluates their effectiveness experimentally.

Findings

Network coding increases throughput by 20-30%.

Modifications enable practical implementation of WNC on SDR.

Lab experiments validate the throughput gains.

Abstract

Network coding (NC), in principle, is a Layer-3 innovation that improves network throughput in wired networks for multicast/broadcast scenarios. Due to the fundamental differences between wired and wireless networks, extending NC to wireless networks generates several new and significant practical challenges. Two-way information exchange (both symmetric and asymmetric). Network coding (NC), in principle, is a Layer-3 innovation that improves network throughput in wired networks for multicast/broadcast scenarios. Due to the fundamental differences between wired and wireless networks, extending NC to wireless networks generates several new and significant practical challenges. Two-way information exchange (both symmetric and asymmetric) between a pair of 802.11 sources/sinks using an intermediate relay node is a canonical scenario for evaluating the effectiveness of Wireless Network Coding (WNC) in a practical setting. Our primary objective in this work is to suggest pragmatic and novel modifications at the MAC and PHY layers of the 802.11 protocol stack on a Software Radio (SORA) platform to support WNC and obtain achievable throughput estimates via lab-scale experiments. Our results show that network coding (at the MAC or PHY layer) increases system throughput-typically by 20-30%%.