Opportunistic Scheduling for Wireless Network Coding

This letter addresses a scheduling problem for wireless network coding (WNC). In our previous work, we have theoretically shown that the optimum number of nodes to be included into a network-coded packet as well as its transmission rate depends on time-varying link condition between a transmitting node and receiving nodes [1]. Based on this observation, this letter designs practical scheme which opportunistically selects scheduled nodes, packets to be coded and an employed modulation level according to time-varying channel conditions and packet length. The numerical results show that the proposed opportunistic scheduling can improve the overall throughput as compared with non-opportunistic approach.