Joint Inter-flow Network Coding and Opportunistic Routing in Multi-hop Wireless Mesh Networks: A Comprehensive Survey

Network coding and opportunistic routing are two recognized innovative ideas to improve the performance of wireless networks by utilizing the broadcast nature of the wireless medium. In the last decade, there has been considerable research on how to synergize inter-flow network coding and opportunistic routing in a single joint protocol outperforming each in any scenario. This paper explains the motivation behind the integration of these two techniques, and highlights certain scenarios in which the joint approach may even degrade the performance, emphasizing the fact that their synergistic effect cannot be accomplished with a naive and perfunctory combination. This survey paper also provides a comprehensive taxonomy of the joint protocols in terms of their fundamental components and associated challenges, and compares existing joint protocols. We also present concluding remarks along with an outline of future research directions. This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through its Discovery program. Somayeh Kafaie and Yuanzhu Chen are with the Department of Computer Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL A1B 3X5, Canada. E-mail: {somayeh.kafaie, yzchen}@mun.ca. Octavia A. Dobre and Mohamed Hossam Ahmed are with the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL A1B 3X5, Canada. Email: {odobre, mhahmed}@mun.ca. ar X iv :1 80 3. 00 47 4v 1 [ cs .N I] 1 M ar 2 01 8