An enhanced XOR-based scheme for wireless packet retransmission problem

Solving wireless packet retransmission problem WPRTP using network coding NC is increasingly attracting research efforts. However, existing NC-based schemes for WPRTP are with high computational complexity resulting from computation on larger Galois field GF2q, or the solutions on GF2 found by the schemes are less efficient. In this paper, combining the basic ideas in two existing schemes, denoted as ColorNC and CliqueNC, respectively, we present a new scheme named as ColorCliqueNC. The advantages of ColorCliqueNC include the following: i it is suitable for all kinds of WPRTP instances; ii it works on GF2; thus, it is computationally efficient than the schemes working on larger Galois fields; and iii the solutions found by ColorCliqueNC usually have fewer packet retransmissions than those by ColorNC and CliqueNC despite that they all work on GF2. Theoretical analysis indicates that ColorCliqueNC is superior to ColorNC and CliqueNC. Simulation results show that ColorCliqueNC generally outperforms ColorNC and CliqueNC. Compared with ColorNC, ColorCliqueNC can save up to 10% packet retransmissions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.