Joint Inter-flow Network Coding and Opportunistic Routing in Multi-hop Wireless Mesh Networks: A Comprehensive Survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews the integration of inter-flow network coding and opportunistic routing in multi-hop wireless mesh networks, discussing their benefits, challenges, and future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive taxonomy and comparison of joint protocols, highlighting the complexities and scenarios where integration may not always be beneficial.

Findings

Joint protocols can improve network performance in certain scenarios.

Naive combination of techniques may degrade performance.

Future research should address integration challenges.

Abstract

Network coding and opportunistic routing are two recognized innovative ideas to improve the performance of wireless networks by utilizing the broadcast nature of the wireless medium. In the last decade, there has been considerable research on how to synergize inter-flow network coding and opportunistic routing in a single joint protocol outperforming each in any scenario. This paper explains the motivation behind the integration of these two techniques, and highlights certain scenarios in which the joint approach may even degrade the performance, emphasizing the fact that their synergistic effect cannot be accomplished with a naive and perfunctory combination. This survey paper also provides a comprehensive taxonomy of the joint protocols in terms of their fundamental components and associated challenges, and compares existing joint protocols. We also present concluding remarks along with an outline of future research directions.