Transport Capacity of Wireless Networks: Benefits from Multi-Access Computation Coding

We consider the effect on the transport capacity of wireless networks of different physical layer coding mechanisms. We compare the performance of traditional channel coding techniques, turning the wireless network in reliable point-to-point channels, with multi-access computation coding, in which nodes receive functions of messages transmitted by different neighbours. In both cases, network coding is used on higher layers. For one-dimensional networks, the benefit in transport capacity of computation-coding over point-to-point channels is a factor of 2; for two-dimensional networks, we show it to be at least 2.5.