Star-Structure Network Coding for Multiple Unicast Sessions in Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper, first, we propose Star-NC, a new network coding (NC) scheme for multiple unicast sessions in an n-input n-output star structure. Then, we evaluate the network throughput of this coding scheme in wireless mesh network over the traditional non-NC transmission. Our scheme benefits from the proximity of all the nodes around the relay node and employs a more general form of overhearing different from other schemes such as COPE. We found that the gain of our NC scheme depends on both the star size and the routing pattern of the unicast transmissions. Based on this, we identify both the situations which the maximum gain is achievable and a lower bound for the expected value of the gain in the case of random routing pattern. Next, we propose an analytical framework for studying throughput gain of our Star-NC scheme in general wireless network topologies. Our theoretical formulation via linear programming provides a method for finding source-destination routes and utilizing the best choices of our NC scheme to maximize the throughput. Finally, we evaluate our model for various networks, traffic models and routing strategies over coding-oblivious routing. We also compare the throughput gain of our scheme with COPE-type NC scheme. We show that Star-NC exploits new coding opportunities different from COPE-type NC and thus can be used with or without this scheme. The results show that Star-NC has often better performance than COPE for a directional traffic model which is a typical model in wireless mesh networks. Moreover, we found that, joint Star and COPE-type NC has better throughput performance than each of Star or COPE alone.