TCP Performance in Coded Wireless Mesh Networks

This paper investigates the benefit of network coding for TCP traffic in a wireless mesh network. We implement network coding in a real wireless mesh network and measure TCP throughput in such a network. Unlike previous implementations of network coding in mesh networks, we use off-the-shelf hardware and software and do not modify TCP or the underlying MAC protocol. Therefore, our implementation can be easily exported to any operational wireless mesh network with minimal modifications. Furthermore, the TCP throughput improvement reported in this paper is due solely to network coding and is orthogonal to other improvements that can be achieved by optimizing other system components such as the MAC protocol. We conduct extensive measurements to understand the relation between TCP throughput and network coding in different mesh topologies. We show that network coding not only reduces the number of transmissions by sending multiple packets via a single transmission but also results in s...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: SECON
• Authors: Yong Huang, Majid Ghaderi, Donald F. Towsley, Weibo Gong
• Keywords: Communications, Network Coding, SECON 2008, Throughput, Wireless Mesh Network