Network Coding and Quality of Service for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Network Coding is a relatively new forwarding paradigm where intermediate nodes perform a store, code, and forward operation on incoming packets. Traditional forwarding approaches, which employed a store and forward operation, have not been able to approach the limit of the max-flow min-cut throughput wherein sources transmitting information over bottleneck links have to compete for access to these links. With Network Coding, multiple sources are now able to transmit packets over bottleneck links simultaneously, achieving the max-flow min-cut throughput and increasing network capacity. While the majority of the contemporary literature has focused on the performance of Network Coding from a capacity perspective, the aim of this research has taken a new direction focusing on two Quality of Service metrics, e.g., Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) and Latency, in conjunction with Network Coding protocols in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). Simulations are performed on static and mobile environments to determine a Quality of Service baseline comparison between Network Coding protocols and traditional ad hoc routing protocols. The results show that the Random Linear Network Coding protocol has the lowest Latency and Dynamic Source Routing protocol has the highest PDR in the static scenarios, and show that the Random Linear Network Coding protocol has the best cumulative performance for both PDR and Latency in the mobile scenarios.