Performance and complexity of tunable sparse network coding with gradual growing tuning functions over wireless networks

Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) has been shown to be a technique with several benefits, in particular when applied over wireless mesh networks, since it provides robustness against packet losses. On the other hand, Tunable Sparse Network Coding (TSNC) is a promising concept, which leverages a trade-off between computational complexity and goodput. An optimal density tuning function has not been found yet, due to the lack of a closed-form expression that links density, performance and computational cost. In addition, it would be difficult to implement, due to the feedback delay. In this work we propose two novel tuning functions with a lower computational cost, which do not highly increase the overhead in terms of the transmission of linear dependent packets compared with RLNC and previous proposals. Furthermore, we also broaden previous studies of TSNC techniques, by means of an extensive simulation campaign carried out using the ns-3 simulator. This brings the possibility of assessing their performance over more realistic scenarios, e.g considering MAC effects and delays. We exploit this implementation to analyze the impact of the feedback sent by the decoder. The results, compared to RLNC, show a reduction of 3.5 times in the number of operations without jeopardizing the network performance, in terms of goodput, even when we consider the delay effect on the feedback sent by the decoder.