Improving reliability in lossy wireless networks using network coding

Wireless communications between devices can be lossy owing to a number of issues, such as channel fading, interference or mobility of devices. In some scenarios, the lossy characteristic of wireless communications can be random hence better characterized from a stochastic perspective. In view of this, lossy wireless networks have been studied recently, where the transmission between each pair of nodes is successful with a certain probability. This paper investigates the reliability of broadcast in lossy networks, where the reliability is measured by the probability that every node in the network receives the packets of every other node. To improve the reliability, nodes can cooperate with each other using network coding techniques. In this paper, a neighbor network coding scheme is proposed and network reliability under this coding scheme is investigated analytically. This paper shows that reliability of networks can be improved considerably by using the proposed neighbor coding scheme. Further, closed-form upper and lower bounds on the network reliability are presented. Moreover, an optimal neighbor coding scheme that maximizes the reliability of a given network is discussed.