A rule-based inter-session network coding scheme over IEEE 802.16(d) mesh CDS-mode networks

In the literature, an opportunistic inter-session network coding scheme needs to exchange extra control messages to maintain traffic flow states to operate. However, such a requirement increases the implementation complexity of a network coding scheme. In this paper, we propose a rule-based network coding scheme (RNC) that performs opportunistic inter-session network coding using a stateless design. By exploiting this stateless design, the proposed coding scheme is easy to implement and deploy. In addition, in this paper based on RNC we study the hidden terminal problems between different coding structures. Such a problem may result in severe packet collisions in a network-coding-based network and thus degrade network coding performance. To alleviate this problem, based on RNC we propose a smart handshake procedure (called RNC-SHP) over the IEEE 802.16(d) mesh coordinated distributed scheduling (CDS) mode to reduce the number of hidden terminals between pairwise network coding structures. Our simulation results show that the proposed RNC schemes can greatly outperform the original routing-based scheme on end-to-end flow goodputs and packet delays.