Effect of network-coding overhead on end-to-end throughput for multihop wireless networks

Network coding is expected to improve throughput performance of multihop wireless networks. However, the end-to-end throughput is significantly affected by the coding overhead. This paper considers the impact of the coding overhead on throughput performance for multihop wireless networks. Focusing on a three-node chain topology, we model an intermediate node as a single-server queueing system with two buffers. We construct a discrete-time Markov chain on the epochs where one of nodes starts a packet transmission, analyzing the per-flow throughput. The analysis is validated by simulation. Numerical examples show that a long processing time for coding significantly degrades the per-flow throughput.