A Network Coding Approach for Efficient Information Sharing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

We consider the problem of local information exchange among neighboring nodes in a wireless sensor network with the help of network coding. We propose a simple, efficient, and distributed algorithm based on network coding for mutually sharing the 2-hop information among nodes there by achieving a better performance in terms of less number of transmissions and low energy dissipation. We analyze our work with the help of simulations. The results show a reduce number of transmissions required for exchanging the 2-hop information when network coding based approach is used instead of simple forwarding. The simulation results also show a substantial reduction in energy dissipation for our algorithm. The performance of our algorithm is increased in terms of collecting the information from all the 2-hop neighbors of a node as the average node degree is increased in a network.