Message Forwarding in Sparsely Connected Wireless Networks Using Rateless Codes

Rateless codes can reduce retransmission costs over erasure channels. Existing routing algorithms using rateless codes assume densely connected networks and predecide the forwarder nodes, which subsequently participate in message forwarding. Using a rateless code, which is easy to analyze and implement, we propose practically implementable opportunistic message forwarding algorithms for sparsely connected networks, in which all the nodes can potentially participate in forwarding, and study their performance through simulations.