Network coding for hop-by-hop communication enhancement in multi-hop networks

In our recent study, we introduced the PlayNCool protocol that increases the throughput of the wireless networks by enabling a helper node to strengthen the communication link between two neighboring nodes and using random linear network coding. This paper focuses on design and implementation advantages of the PlayNCool protocol in a real environment of wireless mesh networks. We provide a detailed protocol to implement PlayNCool that is independent from the other protocols in the current computer network stack. PlayNCool performance is evaluated using NS–3 simulations and real-life measurements using Aalborg University’s Raspberry Pi test-bed. Our results show that selecting the best policy to activate the helper node is a key to guarantee the performance of PlayNCool protocol. We also study the effect of neighbor nodes in the performance of PlayNCool. Using a helper in presence of active neighbors is useful even if the channel from helper to destination is not better than the channel between sender and destination. PlayNCool increases the gain of end-to-end communication by two-fold or more while maintaining compatibility to standard wireless ad-hoc routing protocols.