www.ietdl.

org
Published in IET Wireless Sensor Systems
Received on 21st April 2011
Revised on 4th September 2011
doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069

ISSN 2043-6386

Co-operative routing for wireless sensor networks

using network coding
R.R. Rout1 S.K. Ghosh2 S. Chakrabarti1
1
G.S. Sanyal School of Telecommunications, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India
2
School of Information Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India
E-mail: rashmirsays@gmail.com; skg@iitkgp.ac.in; saswat@ece.iitkgp.ernet.in

Abstract: Omni-directional two-way traffic flow using flooding leads to broadcast storm problem in a wireless sensor network
(WSN). The probabilistic routing protocols help in reducing the broadcast storm but lack reliability. Network coding is a new
paradigm that allows an intermediate node to encode incoming packets which improves the bandwidth efficiency and
reliability of the WSN. A network coding-based probabilistic routing (NCPR) scheme has been proposed, which is energy-
efficient, reliable and alleviates the broadcast storm problem in a clustered WSN. The focus of this work is to design the
network coding-based procedures for probabilistic routing protocols. In NCPR, a sensor node initialises a transmission
process in a WSN cluster by transmitting a packet from its sensed queue. Each neighbour node encodes its received packet
with its sensed packet using XOR network coding and transmits the coded packet with certain probability. Three network
coding-based procedures have been proposed for encoding and decoding of packets in intra-cluster and inter-cluster
communications by distributing roles among the sensor nodes. It has been shown that the NCPR scheme provides better
energy efficiency and reliability compared to the probabilistic routing and pure flooding schemes.

1 Introduction data packets to the next node. In comparison to the

In recent years, the usage of wireless sensor network (WSN)
is becoming popular as such networks can be deployed
for distributed monitoring, like environmental monitoring,
seismic monitoring, healthcare assistance, military
applications [1] and so on. Traditional communication
paradigm in WSNs are many-to-one [2], one-to-many and
many-to-many. The many-to-one traffic flows from sensor
nodes to sink node and the one-to-many traffic flows from
sink node to sensor nodes. In many-to-many paradigm, two-
way traffic flows between sensor nodes. Usually, there is a
considerable amount of omni-directional redundant traffic
flow in many-to-many paradigm. Even though the flooding
of data packets simplifies the working of WSN, it leads to
broadcast storm problem for many-to-many communication.
Probabilistic routing schemes [3, 4] are used to restrict the
flow of redundant messages with small routing overhead in
WSN. However, these probabilistic schemes lack reliability
due to the absence of request to send – clear to send (RTS –
CTS) and acknowledgment mechanisms. Therefore alternate
suitable energy-efficient mechanisms are required to protect
the network from link failures (due to collision, contention
etc.).
The network coding technique is the basis for many
bandwidth and energy-efficient transmission schemes in
wireless networks [5, 6]. With network coding, the
intermediate nodes of a network can appropriately encode
the incoming data packets before transmitting the coded
traditional store and forward mechanism, the network
coding technique improves the bandwidth efficiency and
thus decreases the energy consumption [2, 5, 7].
In a wireless network, the wireless link status changes
dynamically due to interference. Therefore the network is
prone to packet loss. To mitigate the effect of such
problems, Al-Kofahi and Kamal [2] have proposed a
scheme on survivability against link failure using network
coding. The reliability gain of network coding against link
failure and path failure has also been studied by Aly and
Kamal [8] and Bahramgiri and Lahouti [9], respectively.
Moreover, network coding has emerged as an efficient
technique [10 – 14] to tackle the broadcasting capabilities in
a network. In a WSN, the packet loss by the intermediate
sensor nodes may lead to a situation where the sink node
may not receive sufficient packets to decode. Thus the sink
node may fail to take appropriate global decisions. For a
cluster-based WSN, to take local decisions distributively,
the intermediate sensor nodes should decode the network-
coded packets by hearing its neighbours from the same
cluster or from the neighbour clusters.
This paper proposes a new routing scheme for clustered
WSN, incorporating an efficient form of network coding. In
the proposed scheme the intermediate sensor nodes as
well as the sink node can encode and decode the packets.
This scenario is applicable for mission critical applications,
such as battle field, where reliability is a major issue. For
such many-to-many traffic flows, the clusters can share

IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75–85 75

doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012
www.ietdl.org
information among themselves and take decisions locally
without waiting for the sink node each time. The proposed
scheme helps in protecting the WSN against link failures.
Nguyen et al. [15] defined the network coding gain for
single-hop communication. This definition of network
coding gain, however, needs modification for multi-hop
communication in WSN. The scheme improves the
network coding gain which is expressed in terms of
transmission coding gain and reception coding gain. The
transmission coding gain is defined as the ratio of the
native data packets transmitted with network coding to the
number of data packets transmitted without network coding
using the same number of transmissions in the WSN.
Furthermore, the reception coding gain is defined as the
ratio of the native data packets received with network coding
to the number of data packets received without network
coding using the same number of receptions in the network.
The major contributions of this present work can be
summarised as follows:
† Three network-coding-based encoding and decoding
procedures are designed for a clustered WSN by distributing
functionalities among the sensor nodes. The encoding and
decoding procedures assist the sensor nodes to take decisions
locally without waiting for global decisions from the sink
node.
† Development of a network-coding-based probabilistic
routing scheme by incorporating the customised network
coding procedures in probabilistic routing. The proposed
scheme exhibits better performance in terms of network
coding gain, energy efficiency and reliability.
† A detailed theoretical analysis and simulation have been
carried out for the proposed network-coding-based
probabilistic routing (NCPR) scheme.
1.1 Network coding
Network coding is a technique which allows an intermediate
node of a network to encode the information received from its
neighbouring nodes. Let p1 , p2 , . . . , pn denote the n number
of sensed packets by same or different source nodes. These
packets are transmitted by the source nodes and received by
a neighbouring encoder sensor node. Let the maximum
number of packets that can be encoded by an encoder node
into one packet at a time be w. So, n/w number of encoded
packets are generated by an encoder. A header which
contains some bits for a coding vector and some bits to
specify the source or generator sensor node of the packet
may be associated with each encoded packet. Generalised
encoding and decoding processes of linear network coding
[16] are described below.
1.1.1 Encoding process: The coded packets transmitted
through a network, based on linear network coding [16], are
viewed as elements in finite field GF(2s), where 2s is the
size of the finite field. When a node wants to transmit
network coded data, it first chooses a sequence of
coefficients q ¼ (q1 , q2 , . . . , qn), called encoding vector,
from GF(2s). A set of n packets Gi (i ¼ 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . , n)
arriving at the node are linearly encoded into a single
output packet. An output encoded packet is generated by
computing the linear combination

n
Y = qi Gi , qi [ GF(2s ) (1)
i=1
76
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012
Each node which wants to transmit the network coded data
computes a similar linear combination as given in (1). The
encoded packets are transmitted through the network with
the n coefficients. The encoding vector is used in the
receiver side to decode the data. In this paper, the XOR
network coding is used. It is a special case of linear
network coding [16]. The encoded packets that are
transmitted in the network are elements in GF(2) ¼ {0, 1}.
In this case, bitwise XOR in GF(2) is used as an operation.
1.1.2 Decoding process: A receiver node has to solve a
set of linear equations to retrieve the original packets. The
encoding vector q is received by the recipients with the
encoded data. Let a node has received a set (q 1, Y 1), . . . , (q m,
Y m). The notations Y j and q j denote the information symbol
and the coding vector for the jth received packet, respectively.
The following form of linear system (2) with m equations and
n unknowns need to be solved for decoding operation.

n
Yj = qji Gi , j = 1, . . . , m (2)
i=1
At least n linearly independent packets must be received by the
recipients to decode the original native packets. Here, the only
unknown is Gi which contains the original packets transmitted
in the network. The n number of original packets can be
decoded by solving the linear system in (2) after getting n
linearly independent packets.
1.1.3 Example of XOR network coding: An example of
XOR network coding is shown in Fig. 1. Three nodes such
as S, R and D are involved in communication. The nodes S
and D are not within the transmission range of each other
and thus communicate among themselves using the relay
node R. The relay node R receives the individual packets
from the nodes S and D, as shown in Fig. 1. The node R
relays network-coded packet (s ⊕ d ) to nodes S and D
using only one transmission. The node S decodes the data
transmitted by the node D (i.e. (s ⊕ (s ⊕ d ) ¼ d )).
Similarly, the node D can decode the data transmitted by
the node S. In the absence of network coding, the relay
node has to relay both the data s and d separately using
two transmissions. Thus, network coding improves the
bandwidth efficiency in a wireless network.
The rest of this paper is organised as follows. Section 2
presents the related work and motivation behind the work.
In Section 3, the proposed scheme has been presented and
three network-coding procedures have been described. The
simulation results and discussions are presented in Section
4. Finally, the concluding remarks are given in Section 5.
2 Related work
This work presents a co-operative routing scheme using
XOR network coding. The information theoretic aspect of
network coding was introduced by Ahlswede et al. [5]. Lun
et al. [13] have proposed their scheme for random linear
Fig. 1 XOR network coding
IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75– 85
doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069

network coding that achieves packet-level capacity for both
single unicast and single multicast connections in wireless
networks. Li et al. [17] have proposed a method to
incorporate network coding into a non-coding-based
localised algorithm that tries to optimise the coding gains
given a set of native packets and the subset of packets each
neighbour receives. Furthermore, a network coding scheme
for mobile ad hoc network (MANET) using directional
antenna has been proposed by Yang and Wu [18]. Widmer
et al. [19] have proposed an energy-efficient broadcasting in
wireless ad hoc networks.
A basic scheme that uses XOR of packets for practical
network coding has been proposed by Katti et al. [20].
They have shown a significant bandwidth improvement in
wireless mesh network. However, Keller et al. [11] have
designed a communication protocol that obtains the trade-
off between energy efficiency and reliability in WSN.
Unlike existing approaches, the focus of this paper is on the
analysis of the reliable wireless broadcast problem in a
single-hop (intra-cluster communication) as well as multi-
hop (inter-cluster communication) in WSN, where energy
consumption is an important constraint.
A model for single-hop communication applicable to WiMax
has been proposed by Nguyen et al. [15]. They employed XOR
network-coding scheme for one sender to multiple receivers.
Unlike Nguyen et al., a multiple sender and multiple receiver-
assisted system model is considered in this paper. Rout
et al. [21] have proposed a recursive topology construction
algorithm over a randomly deployed WSN. They have shown
that assigning different responsibilities to different sensor
nodes in the recursive topology boost the network-coding
benefits.
The broadcast storm problem due to simple flooding
of messages can be eradicated using probabilistic routing
protocols [3, 4, 22]. Ni et al. [22] have proposed a
probabilistic rebroadcasting scheme to mitigate the broadcast
storm problem in MANET. However, the simple probabilistic
routing protocols are vulnerable to packet loss due to node
failure or link failure. So, there is a necessity of some suitable
broadcast technique which can use probabilistic routing
protocols and can provide reliability against link failure or
node failure.
A basic probabilistic routing scheme (GOSSIP1) has been
proposed by Haas et al. [3]. Fig. 2 shows a packet
Fig. 2 Transmission method in probabilistic routing (GOSSIP1 by
Haas et al. [3])
IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75–85
doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069
www.ietdl.org
dissemination scenario in WSN using the probabilistic
routing scheme. A source sensor node (S) transmits a packet,
say s, with probability p ¼ 1. When intermediate nodes
(such as N1 , N2 and N3 in Fig. 2) first receive the packet,
they rebroadcasts the packet to its neighbours with
probability p ¼ k (where k ¼ 0.1, 0.2, . . . , 1). The packet is
discarded with probability (1 2 p) by the intermediate nodes.
In case, a node receives same packet again, it is discarded.
So, each node rebroadcasts or forwards a given data packet
at most once. The packet is disseminated throughout the
network and ultimately reached at the destination sink node D.
There exists a major gap in implementing network coding
for many-to-many communication paradigm in WSN. This
paper presents a probabilistic routing scheme using network
coding with XOR-based encoding – decoding procedures in
WSN. While most of the prior work assumes the analysis
of network traffic for either many-to-one or one-to-many
communication, a many-to-many paradigm of two-way
traffic flow is considered in this paper. It has also been
shown in this paper that despite the topological changes due
to link failure, the WSN performance improves.
3 NCPR scheme
This section deals with a network model which describes the
communication paradigm in a cluster-based many-to-many
WSN. The proposed scheme along with the three network-
coding procedures are presented in this section. The issues
such as reliability, network coding gain and energy
consumption of the WSN (using NCPR) are discussed. The
symbols used in rest of this paper are given in Table 1.
3.1 Network model
A WSN is represented as a graph G(V, E), where V is the set
of nodes and E is the set of links in a network. The WSN is
divided into several cluster area such as Cluster 1, Cluster
2, . . . , Cluster N (note: cluster and cluster area are having
the same meaning). The nodes, say r, which are within the
transmission range of each other form a cluster (clique).
The cluster area is assumed to be circular. There are two
cases: (a) the clusters are overlapped and (b) the clusters are
not overlapped. In both the cases, nodes in neighbouring
clusters can communicate with each other. Moreover,
sensor nodes belonging to the boundary or edge region of a
cluster can overhear packets from neighbour clusters. Let g
be the number of sensor nodes that belong to a particular
cluster which can communicate with a neighbour cluster.
Therefore (r 2 g) number of sensor nodes cannot
communicate directly with the neighbour cluster. They can
communicate using g sensor nodes as relay nodes.
Let the probability of retransmission is denoted as p. When
the value of p ¼ 1, the probabilistic routing protocol [3]
behaves as pure flooding. Furthermore, each node can
identify its own location information by global positioning
system (GPS) [23]. However, each sensor node can also use
any other localisation schemes [24, 25] to detect whether
the node is at the edge region or at the intermediate region
of a cluster area. Furthermore, each sensor node can know
its direct neighbours by exchanging control messages.
3.2 NCPR scheme
A sensor node initialises the transmission process by
transmitting a native (sensed) data packet in a cluster. The
neighbour sensor nodes receive the native packet. The
77
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012
www.ietdl.org
Table 1 List of symbols used in this paper

Symbol Description of the symbol

r number of sensor nodes in a cluster (clique)

p probability of retransmission/routing probability
x native packet (sensed/non-coded packet) length in bits
g number of edge or relay sensor nodes in a cluster
Pr packet reception ratio (ratio of packets received with error to the packets received without error)
Econ energy consumption (in nAh)
Etx energy consumption for each transmission (in nAh)
et energy consumption for each reception (in nAh)
Pi ith received packet in the input (received) queue of a sensor node
Pj jth sensed packet in the input (sensed) queue of a sensor node
f number of data packets lost during transmission in the network
d transmission distance in meters
h overhead of network coding in bits
H1 number of bits present in the header of a packet in probabilistic routing
H2(i) number of header (variable length) bits in ith (encoded) packet transmission in NCPR scheme
H2 number of header (fixed length) bits in a network coded packet in NCPR scheme
T total number of transmissions in the WSN
W total number of receptions in the WSN
M1 number of bits transmitted in probabilistic routing with header H1 bits in one transmission
L1 number of bits received in probabilistic routing with header H1 bits in one reception
M2(i) number of native bits transmitted in the ith (encoded) packet transmission in NCPR scheme with header
H2(i) bits (with variable length header)
L2(i) number of native bits received in the ith (encoded) packet reception in NCPR scheme with header H2(i) bits
(with variable length header)
M2 number of native bits transmitted in NCPR scheme with fixed length header H2 bits
L2 number of native bits received in NCPR scheme with fixed length header H2 bits

neighbour sensor nodes encode (XOR) its own native packet
with the received packet and retransmit the coded packet with
routing probability p. Each active sensor node transmits once
before a second round of transmission starts. Let there are g
edge sensor nodes that act as relay nodes in a cluster. So,
(r 2 g) number of sensor nodes share their information with
each other. In the NCPR scheme, packet loss at the receiver
sensor nodes is independent and uncorrelated (i.e. follows a
Bernoulli trial). A receiver sensor node requests for
a packet which is not received successfully by sending a
negative acknowledgment packet. However, the receiver
node waits till the completion of one round of
retransmissions by its neighbours. The node receives coded
packets from all other nodes and it decodes the lost packet
without requesting for a fresh retransmission. This approach
improves the bandwidth efficiency in the network.
However, if after one round of retransmission the receiver
node does not get enough packets to decode, it requests the
sender to retransmit the lost packets. If a native packet at
the relay node in a cluster is lost, the node requests for a
fresh retransmission.
3.3 Model for network coding
In NCPR scheme, the XOR network coding is used. Length
of an encoded packet (i.e. A(x)) in NCPR scheme is given by
A(x) = vx + h (3)
where x is the length (in bits) of a sensed native packet, h is the
length of the header (in bits) for network coding and v is a
positive integer constant. The header contains an encoding
vector as well as some bits to identify the sensor nodes whose
packets are encoded. The overhead increases as more number
of packets of length x are encoded from the same source or
from different sources. v is 1 for XOR network coding. To
restrict the overhead in the packet header, the r-coded packets
need to be restricted. Since in NCPR scheme a cluster is
restricted to a clique, the value of r reduces. It helps us to
design a generalised XOR coding scheme for a cluster-based
WSN with even and odd number of intermediate sensor nodes
which is presented later in this section.
3.4 Responsibility of sensor nodes
Inter-cluster and intra-cluster communications are shown in
Figs. 3a and b, respectively. Fig. 3b also shows a scenario
of communication between two neighbouring clusters such
as Cluster 1 and Cluster 2 using edge or relay sensor node.
In NCPR scheme, sensor nodes are differentiated into three
categories depending on their functionalities at various
locations in a cluster: Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 [26].
Operations of all the three types of sensor nodes are shown
in Fig. 4. Type 1 (node S in Fig. 3b) sensor node
broadcasts sensed packets to the sensor nodes within its
range. Type 2 (nodes A and B in Fig. 3b) sensor nodes
inside a cluster perform network coding and broadcast the
encoded packets. The sensor nodes which are in its range
receive the encoded packets. Type 1 and Type 2
intermediate sensor nodes interchange their role from time
to time inside a cluster (refer flowchart in Fig. 5). Pi is the
ith received packet that is stored in the input queue of an
intermediate sensor node (Fig. 4a). Pi is ready for encoding
operation. Pj is the jth sensed packet which is also ready for
encoding operation in an intermediate sensor node
(Fig. 4a). Type 3 sensor nodes (e.g. node C in Fig. 3b) are
the edge or boundary nodes (in Fig. 3a) which act as the
relay nodes for inter-cluster communication.

78 IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75– 85

& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012 doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069

Fig. 3 Inter-cluster and intra-cluster communications
a Inter-cluster communication
b Intra-cluster communication
Fig. 4 Operations of different sensor nodes
a Type 1 and Type 2 intermediate sensor nodes
b Type 3 edge or relay sensor nodes
3.4.1 Role of packet transmitting and packet
receiving nodes: Packet transmitting nodes are the
nodes which transmit packets in a network during a
particular duration of time. Packet receiving nodes are the
nodes which receive packets in a network during a
particular duration of time. Let S transmits a native packet
with p ¼ 1 in the scenario as shown in Fig. 3b. The nodes
A, B and C are the neighbours of S and receive the
packet. The node A encodes its sensed packet with the
received one. Node A transmits the encoded packet which
is further received by the nodes S, B, C and D as shown
in Fig. 3b. So, the total number of transmitting nodes is
two and the total number of receiving nodes is seven after
two transmissions. Moreover, when the number of
retransmissions in the network increases, the total number
of nodes involved in the process of transmission and
reception also increases (i.e. there is an increase in the
number of packet transmitting and packet receiving nodes
in the network).
3.5 Working principle of NCPR
The proposed encoding and decoding procedures (processes)
for different types of sensor nodes are shown using three
IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75–85
doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069
www.ietdl.org
flowcharts (refer Figs. 5 – 7). As shown in Fig. 5, whenever
the role of a sensor node is Type 1, the node keeps the
previously transmitted native packet in buffer (i.e. Pj21).
The current sensed packet is stored in Pj . The native packet
Pj is transmitted if Pj is significantly different than Pj21 ,
otherwise, the transmission is stopped. However, when the
role of a node is Type 2, transmission of encoded packet
has occurred as shown in Fig. 5. The edge or relay (Type
3) sensor nodes receives native and encoded packets in the
cluster. The Type 3 node picks a packet and checks
whether it is an encoded packet or not as shown in Fig. 6.
Whenever the packet Pi is a native data packet, the content
of the packet is stored in a buffer. If Pi is an encoded
packet then the decoding of encoded packets takes place by
the edge or relay sensor node as depicted in Fig. 6. The
decoded packets are stored in Pk which are used for the
encoding process at the relay node. The encoding process
occurs by the Type 3 nodes after taking decoded packets
from Pk as shown in Fig. 7. P0 contains the received native
packet. Pc stores the encoded packet after the encoding
process. If the number of intermediate sensor nodes (i.e. K )
is odd, the native data packet P0 is encoded (XOR) with Pc ,
otherwise the encoded packet is constructed without P0
(refer Fig. 7).
79
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012
www.ietdl.org

Fig. 7 Encoding procedure (process) for an edge or relay sensor

Fig. 5 Network coding operation (procedure) for an intermediate
sensor node
node
other, and each node has equal transmission radius. The
starting node S broadcasts the sensed data, say s, which is
received by sensor nodes A, B and C. The node A senses
its own data a and it broadcasts the network coded packet
(a ⊕ s) with probability p. The information (a ⊕ s) is
received by the sensor nodes S, B, C and D. Similarly, the
node B senses its own information b and it broadcasts the
network coded packet (b ⊕ s) (case i) or it can also
broadcast the network coded packet (a ⊕ b) (case ii). In the
case i, the information (b ⊕ s) is received by the nodes
which are in its range (node S, A, C, D). Furthermore, in
case ii the information (a ⊕ b) is received by the nodes
which are in its range. The received packets for various
nodes are shown in Tables 2 and 3 for case i and case ii,
respectively (Rp means received packets and Sp means
sensed packets in both the tables). These tables also contain
the received packets by an edge sensor node (D) that
belongs to a neighbour cluster.

Table 2 Received packets by the nodes in case i

Node S Node A Node B Node C Node D

Rp a⊕s s s s a⊕s
b⊕s b⊕s a⊕s a⊕s b⊕s
a⊕b⊕s a⊕b⊕s a⊕b⊕s b⊕s a⊕b⊕s
Sp s a b – –

Table 3 Received packets by the nodes in case ii

Node S Node A Node B Node C Node D

Fig. 6 Decoding procedure (process) for an edge or relay sensor node
Rp a⊕s s s s a⊕s
a⊕b a⊕b a⊕s a⊕s a⊕b
Let m, n and p be the number of Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 a⊕b⊕s a⊕b⊕s a⊕b⊕s a⊕b a⊕b⊕s
nodes, respectively. As shown in Fig. 3b, (m ¼ 1, n ¼ 2, Sp s a b – –
p ¼ 1), the nodes S, A, B, C are within the range of each

80 IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75– 85

& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012 doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069

Node C is an edge or boundary sensor node which receives
the network coded packets from the nodes A and B. It also
receives native data packet from the node S. Node C
decodes the received information and broadcasts the
encoded packet (a ⊕ b ⊕ s). Node D belongs to another
cluster that receives the broadcast data from C. The node D
also receives (a ⊕ s) and (b ⊕ s) in the case i. It receives
(a ⊕ s) and (a ⊕ b) in case ii. These set of received packets
are sufficient to decode the data packets. There are at least
three transmissions required so that the nodes S, A, B can
share data packets within each other using network coding.
With one more transmission by the node C, the node D
which belongs to a different cluster can able to know the
information sent by the sensor nodes S, A and B. The
nodes inside the cluster also receive (a ⊕ b ⊕ s) which is
broadcasted by C. Moreover, the information can be
disseminated from cluster to cluster towards the region of
interest or the sink node R. Furthermore, in NCPR scheme,
the relay node transmits different encoded packets for even
and odd number of intermediate sharing nodes in a cluster
as described by the flowchart given in Fig. 7. For even
number of sharing nodes, the native data s is not within the
coded packet. But, for the odd number case, the native data
s is encoded within the network coded packet (refer
Table 4). The transmission of edge sensor nodes is critical
for proper decode of data packets in intra-cluster as well
as inter-cluster communication. Hence, the probability of
retransmission p is set to be high (i.e. p ¼ 1) for the edge
sensor nodes.
The routing probability p can be set for different sensor
nodes depending upon the denseness of the network.
However, the sensor nodes may be in active state or idle
state. If an active sensor node wants to send a native data
packet which is significantly different than the previous
sensed data, it is transmitted. The neighbouring active
sensor nodes receive the native data and encode their
sensed data with it. The encoded packets are further
transmitted with routing probability p. The routing
probability p is crucial in a WSN where a fraction of data is
transmitted from a geographical region. The fraction of
information should be enough for predicting the status of
the monitoring geographical area.
Edge or relay sensor nodes (e.g. node D in Fig. 3b) play an
important role in the NCPR scheme. The edge sensor nodes in
a cluster hear encoded data packets from its neighbouring
cluster. It decodes the encoded packets and aggregates
the native packets. One native packet representing the
information about the neighbouring cluster is sent by the
edge sensor node within its cluster. Thus the overall traffic
is minimised in the network when the data are transmitted
from one cluster area to another and towards the sink node.
3.6 Cluster head selection
Selection of cluster head is done using round-robin technique.
In a clique, all the sensor nodes are within the range of each
other which form a cluster. Any sensor node can be randomly
Table 4 Relay node encoded packets
Sharing nodes Relay node trans. Nodes involved
2 a S, A, B (relay)
3 a⊕b⊕s S, A, B, C (relay)
4 a⊕b⊕c S, A, B, C, D (relay)
5 a⊕b⊕c⊕d⊕s S, A, B, C, D, E (relay)
IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75–85
doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069
www.ietdl.org
chosen as a cluster head as all nodes have equal
computational resources. In NCPR scheme, the edge sensor
nodes switched off its sensing unit and involve in relaying
encoded packets for intra-cluster communication and inter-
cluster communication. One of the edge sensor nodes out of
g edge nodes takes the role of cluster head for a particular
duration. Another edge sensor node gets the role of cluster
head in the next duration. This process continues among
edge sensor nodes in rotation basis. Furthermore, the cluster
head communicates between neighbouring clusters using a
single hop and communicates with the sink nodes using
multi-hop. After getting the data packets from the cluster
heads, the sink node takes global decisions. Local decisions
are taken by the cluster heads as well as the other sensor
nodes inside the cluster. Especially, the cluster heads take
decisions locally by receiving information from its
neighbouring clusters.
3.7 Reliability
Reliability against information loss (due to link failure or
collision of data packets) is an essential task in WSN [2].
Network coding attempts to provide reliability to the
network without retransmission of lost data packets [8].
From Tables 2 and 3, it can be observed that each
intermediate sensor node can give protection against one
link failure. The upper bound of protection against link
failure is (r 2 g). For n round of retransmissions inside the
cluster, the cluster is protected from O(n(r 2 g)) link failures.
Each node can decode the received packets and gets the
lost packets information. For example, there are four sensor
nodes that belong to Cluster 1 as shown in Fig. 3b. Nodes
S, A and B can able to sustain one packet loss each without
requesting for retransmission of the lost packets (note: only
one edge sensor node ( g ¼ 1) is shown in Cluster 1).
3.8 Energy consumption
Energy consumption of the NCPR scheme and the
probabilistic routing scheme is calculated using the existing
model given by Shelby et al. [27]. It has been shown that
the NCPR scheme restricts the number of retransmissions
against packet loss due to link failure.
Let Etx be the energy consumption for each transmission
and et be the energy consumption for each reception.
Let the total number of transmissions occurred in a WSN is
nt and the total number of receptions is nr . So, the total
energy consumed by the network is given by
Econ = nt Etx + nr et (4)
The model for radio energy consumption [27] can be given by
Etx = etx + ex d l (5)
where etx is the energy consumption of the transmitter
electronics, ex is the energy consumption of the transmit
amplifier, d is the transmission distance and l is the path
loss exponent which is considered as 2.
3.8.1 Energy consumption against packet loss:
Without network coding, the minimum number of
transmissions (lower bound) required to share the data packets
between r sensor nodes inside a cluster is r. If g nodes in the
boundary are considered as relay nodes then total number of
81
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012
www.ietdl.org
transmissions required is (r–g). Let f be the number of data
packets lost during transmissions (i.e. f number of links have
failed). So the total number of transmissions required is
(r 2 g + f ). From (4) the energy consumed without applying
network coding is
Econ = (r − g + f )Etx + nrw et (6)
where nrw is the number of packet receptions without network
coding. The number of link failures (i.e. f ) vary from 1 to
(r 2 g) as per our consideration. In NCPR scheme, there is no
need of retransmissions against f packet loss. If the number of
link failures inside a cluster is greater than (r 2 g), then there
is a requirement of retransmissions. Therefore the energy
consumption with network coding can be given by
Econ = (r − g)Etx + nrn et (7)
where nrn is the number of packet receptions with network
coding.
3.9 Network coding gain
The retransmitted packets in the proposed NCPR scheme
contain encoded packets. To reduce the packet header
length, only 2-coded and 3-coded packets are considered as
shown in Tables 2 and 3. When the number of sensor
nodes increases in the cluster, the r-coded packets can also
be transmitted by the relay node as shown in Table 4.
Network coding gain is defined by Nguyen et al. [15] for
single-hop communication. The definition of network
coding gain however needs modification in view of multi-
hop communication with the use of coding header. Two
categories of network coding gain can be achieved:
transmission coding gain and reception coding gain. The
transmission coding gain is different than the reception
coding gain because for each copy of transmission of native
packet, multiple copies of native packets are received in
WSN. In a generalised scenario of network coding, each
node can encode packets from its own sensed data or from
the received data from different neighbouring nodes or from
the both. Therefore the length of the coding header
associated in NCPR scheme is dissimilar for each
transmission. Moreover, the packet header associated with
each packet in network coding scheme have two parts: (a)
coding vector which is used to encode packets of a
particular sensor node, (b) some bits that specify the source
of the encoded native packets. So, the header bits in NCPR
scheme may vary for different encoded packets. So as to
calculate the actual native information symbol bits
transmitted, the total header bits need to be eliminated. The
transmission coding gain can be formulated as
T  more sophisticated protocols like 802.11 MAC. The radio
i=1 M2 (i) − Ti=1 H2 (i)
(8)
T (M1 − H1 )
where T is the total number of transmissions in WSN, M1 is
the number of bits transmitted in probabilistic routing
(without network coding) with header H1 bits using one
transmission, M2(i) is the number of native bits transmitted
in the ith (encoded) packet transmission in NCPR scheme
with header H2(i) bits. As a special case, with fixed length
82
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012
header, the transmission coding gain can be derived from
(8) as
M 2 T − H2 T M 2 − H2
= (9)
M 1 T − H1 T M 1 − H1
where H2 is the fixed length header within a network coded
packet, M2T is the total bits transmitted which contains
information symbol bits and header bits using the proposed
scheme, M1T is the total bits transmitted which contains
information symbol bits and header bits in the probabilistic
routing scheme. Furthermore, the reception coding gain can
be formulated as
W 
i=1 L2 (i) − Wi=1 H2 (i)
(10)
W (L1 − H1 )
where W is the total number of receptions in the WSN, L1 is
the number of bits received in probabilistic routing (without
network coding) with header H1 bits in one reception, L2(i)
is the number of native bits received in the ith (encoded)
packet reception in NCPR scheme with header H2(i) bits.
As a special case, with fixed length header, the reception
coding gain can be derived from (10) as
L2 W − H2 W L2 − H2
= (11)
L1 W − H1 W L1 − H1
where L2W is the total bits received which contains
information symbol bits and header bits using the proposed
scheme, L1W is the total bits received which contains
information symbol bits and header bits in the probabilistic
routing scheme.
Both the transmission coding gain and the reception coding
gain represent the improvement of the proposed scheme
against the probabilistic routing scheme and the pure
flooding scheme in WSN. In probabilistic routing schemes
[3, 4, 22], each message contains only one packet.
However, in NCPR scheme, the intermediate nodes
retransmit the received packets with a probability p after
encoding their own sensed data with it. Therefore a single
transmission contains multiple packets which leads to high
network throughput.
4 Performance evaluation of NCPR scheme
The NCPR scheme is implemented in a MATLAB-based
network simulator known as Prowler [28]. For the
experiments, a simple MAC layer protocol is used. In this
protocol, a sensor node waits for a random duration of time
before trying to transmit a packet and then waits for a
random back off time if the channel is in busy state. The
sensor node keeps trying until the transmission can be
performed. This protocol consumes less energy than the
propagation model is the free space path loss model where
the signal strength decreases with increase in (d )l and with
fading effect. The path loss exponent, l, is considered as
2. Results are averaged after taking 20 simulation runs: both
for sensor nodes arranged in linear topology (linear array)
and grid topology (grid sensor or sensor nodes in grid). A
simulation parameter table is given in Table 5.
Network coding gain of NCPR scheme for the linear array
is shown in Fig. 8a. For simplicity, all the encoded packets
are taken as two-coded packets for the linear array of 20
IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75– 85
doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069
 www.ietdl.org
Table 5 Simulation settings Table 6 Econ per node and packet reception ratio (Pr) using
NCPR scheme
Parameter Settings
p Econ , nAh Pr
routing probabilistic routing (GOSSIP1)[3],
NCPR scheme Sensor nodes Sensor nodes Sensor nodes Sensor nodes
MAC CSMA in linear array in grid in linear array in grid
propagation free space path loss with fading
model 0.1 6.4 8.48 0.09 0.18
path loss 2 0.2 14.3 20.44 0.13 0.28
exponent 0.3 16.2 27.56 0.14 0.51
sensor nodes Berkeley motes (MICA) 0.4 24.6 34.68 0.18 0.60
packet size MICA mote [29] in Prowler 0.5 33.4 39.92 0.30 0.76
nodes (i) 20 nodes arranged in a linear topology 0.6 36.4 44.84 0.34 0.88
(ii) 100 nodes arranged in a 10 × 10 grid 0.7 42.6 46.28 0.41 1.06
data rate 40 Kbps 0.8 48.6 50.90 0.41 1.16
0.9 52.6 54.80 0.47 1.19
1 54.2 59.76 0.54 1.34
sensor nodes. The average number of neighbours is around
four in the linear topology. In the case of pure flooding (i.e.
p ¼ 1), the transmission coding gain and the reception information about the WSN (Fig. 9b). Sink node receives
coding gain are 1 each, because each transmission and 30% of the sensor data from the distributed region. The
reception carries one native packet. In the NCPR scheme, suitable routing probability using NCPR scheme is 0.3
the coding gain varies with the change of routing when the sensor nodes are arranged in the grid topology.
probability ( p). The coding gains are very low as the value The energy consumption model for MICA mote sensors
of p varies from 0.1 to 0.5. However, as the routing [29] is used in this work. As mentioned earlier, two
probability increases from 0.5 to 0.9, both the coding gains different static WSN scenarios are studied: a linear topology
increase. From 0.9 to 1, it remains constant. So, the suitable and a grid topology. Five sensor nodes form a cluster in the
routing probability to get high degree of coding gain is linear topology. In the 10 × 10 grid, nine sensor nodes
from 0.5 to 0.9. However, with higher routing probability, form a cluster. As estimated in [29], 20 nAh energy is
the number of collided messages increase (i.e. Pr increases) consumed for one packet transmission and 8 nAh energy is
which leads to more energy consumption (Table 6) [note: consumed for one packet reception. The per node energy
Pr is defined in Table 1]. Furthermore, with probability of consumptions in NCPR scheme are shown in Table 6. The
retransmission ( p) ≥ 0.7, all the 20 sensor nodes receive average energy consumption of a node in the grid topology
coded packets. This result is shown in Fig. 8b. When is more than a node in linear topology. In the grid, sensor
p ≥ 0.7, 15 sensor nodes transmit their data from the nodes receive more number of packets from more number
respective regions. The network coding gain saturates at of neighbours surrounding it and involve in more number
p ¼ 0.5 (Fig. 8a) and all the sensor nodes have received of redundant transmissions. However, in the linear array of
packets with routing probability p ¼ 0.7 (Fig. 8b). There is sensors, the neighbours are present in two directions only.
a high probability of successful decoding of data packets in
the network when the probability of retransmission is ≥0.7. 4.1 Comparison of results of NCPR with
Hence, in NCPR scheme, the suitable routing probability is probabilistic routing and pure flooding
0.7 when the sensor nodes are arranged in the linear array.
Network coding gains of NCPR scheme for a grid topology In this section, the energy consumption of NCPR scheme is
with 100 sensor nodes are shown in Fig. 9a. The average compared with probabilistic routing (GOSSIP1) [3] and
number of neighbours is eight in the grid. In this case, both pure flooding. In Figs. 10 and 11, the number of received
coding gains are saturated when p ≥ 0.3 (refer Fig. 9a). packets of the NCPR scheme and probabilistic routing
When p ≥ 0.3, almost 99% of the sensor nodes get scheme (GOSSIP1) [3] with same energy consumption are

Fig. 8 Network coding gain of NCPR scheme for the linear array
a Network coding gain against probability of retransmission ( p)
b Number of (packet transmitting and receiving) nodes against probability of retransmission ( p) in a linear array of 20 sensor nodes using NCPR scheme

IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75–85 83

doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012
www.ietdl.org
Fig. 9 Network coding gains of NCPR scheme for a grid topology with 100 sensor nodes
a Network coding gain against probability of retransmission ( p)
b Number of (packet transmitting and receiving) nodes against probability of retransmission ( p) in a 10 × 10 grid WSN using NCPR scheme
Fig. 10 Number of received packets of the proposed NCPR scheme
and probabilistic routing (i.e. GOSSIP1) by Haas et al. [3] with
same energy consumption in a linear array of 20 sensor nodes
Fig. 11 Number of received packets of the NCPR scheme and
probabilistic routing (i.e. GOSSIP1) by Haas et al. with same
energy consumption in a 10 × 10 grid WSN
shown for two cases (i) sensor nodes arranged in a linear
topology and (ii) sensor nodes arranged in a grid topology,
respectively. The total energy consumption in the network
for different routing probabilities ( p) are shown along the
X-axis (refer Figs. 10 and 11). As the probability of
retransmission increases, the number of transmissions and
receptions of packets increases in the network. Therefore
84
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012
the total energy consumption increases in the network. For
same number of transmissions and same energy
consumption, the number of packets received in the NCPR
scheme is more than that of the probabilistic routing. For
probability p ¼ 1, the probabilistic routing scheme becomes
pure flooding scheme (refer Figs. 10 and 11). It may also
be observed that the number of packets received in the
NCPR scheme is more than that of pure flooding for both
linear and grid topologies.
5 Conclusions
In this paper, an NCPR scheme for cluster-based WSN has
been presented. The proposed NCPR improves the
performance of the network with high network coding gain
and low energy consumption. It has been shown that the
proposed NCPR scheme could achieve a coding gain up to
1.9 with respect to probabilistic routing scheme. Further,
the NCPR scheme provides better reliability in terms of
protection of data packets against link failures. Every
intermediate sensor node in a cluster protects data packets
against one link failure. The retransmission packets contain
network coded packets rather than the non-coded native
packets which utilise link bandwidth efficiently. Also, the
routing probability of retransmitting nodes can be controlled
depending upon the network topology and number of
sensor nodes in the WSN. Using network coding, both the
intra-cluster and the inter-cluster communication are
discussed. Encoding data packets distributively throughout
the network reduces the number of retransmissions in the
network. It can be observed from the simulation results that
the volume of information transmitted in the NCPR scheme
are significantly more than the probabilistic routing and
pure flooding schemes with the same number of
transmissions and energy consumption. For many-to-many
communication paradigm, suitable values of routing
probabilities of the proposed scheme have been identified
to minimise the number of collisions of network coded
packets. The efficacy of the proposed approach has been
shown through simulation results and theoretical analysis.
Future work includes the performance study of NCPR in a
dynamic scenario with some mobile sensor nodes in a
monitoring area. This dynamic behaviour may lead to the
formation of dense and sparse regions. Further, in future,
study of the NCPR scheme for delay sensitive applications
will be carried out.
IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75– 85
doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069

6 References
1 Yick, J., Mukherjee, B., Ghosal, D.: ‘Wireless sensor network survey’,
Comput. Netw., 2008, 52, (12), pp. 2292–2330
2 Al-Kofahi, O.M., Kamal, A.E.: ‘Network coding-based protection of
many-to-one wireless flows’, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., 2009, 27,
(5), pp. 797– 813
3 Haas, Z.J., Halpern, J.Y., Li, L.: ‘GOSSIP-based ad hoc routing’, IEEE/
ACM Trans. Netw., 2006, 14, (3), pp. 479– 491
4 Zhang, Y., Fromherz, M.: ‘A robust and efficient flooding-based routing
for wireless sensor networks’, J. Interconnect. Netw., 2006, 7,
pp. 549–568
5 Ahlswede, R., Cai, N., Li, S.-Y., Yeung, R.: ‘Network information
flow’, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, 2000, 46, pp. 1204–1216
6 Le, T.A., Nakhai, M.R.: ‘Throughput analysis of network coding
enabled wireless backhauls’, IET Commun., 2011, 5, (10),
pp. 1318– 1327
7 Wang, S., Vasilakos, A., Jiang, H., et al.: ‘Energy efficient broadcasting
using network coding aware protocol in wireless ad hoc network’. Proc.
IEEE ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan, 2011, pp. 1– 5
8 Aly, S.A., Kamal, A.E.: ‘Network protection codes against link failures
using network coding’. Proc. IEEE GLOBECOM, December 2008,
pp. 1– 6
9 Bahramgiri, H., Lahouti, F.: ‘Robust network coding against path
failures’, IET Commun., 2010, 4, (3), pp. 272– 284
10 Shabdanov, S., Rosenberg, C., Mitran, P.: ‘Joint routing, scheduling,
and network coding for wireless multihop networks’. Proc. Ninth Int.
Symp. on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and
Wireless Networks (WiOpt), May 2011, pp. 33– 40
11 Keller, L., Atsan, E., Argyraki, K., Fragouli, C.: ‘Sensecode: network
coding for reliable sensor networks’. EPFL Technical Report, October
2009
12 Chekuri, C., Fragouli, C., Soljanin, E.: ‘On average throughput and
alphabet size in network coding’, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, 2006, 52,
pp. 2410– 2424
13 Lun, D., Medard, M., Koetter, R., Effros, M.: ‘On coding for reliable
communication over packet networks’, Phys. Commun., 2008, 1,
pp. 3– 20
14 Gkantsidis, C., Rodriguez, P.: ‘Network coding for large scale content
distribution’. Proc. 24th IEEE INFOCOM, 2005, vol. 4, pp. 2235– 2245
15 Nguyen, D., Tran, T., Nguyen, T., Bose, B.: ‘Wireless broadcast using
network coding’, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 2009, 58, (2),
pp. 914–925
IET Wirel. Sens. Syst., 2012, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 75–85
doi: 10.1049/iet-wss.2011.0069
www.ietdl.org
16 Li, S.-Y.R., Yeung, R.W., Cai, N.: ‘Linear network coding’, IEEE
Trans. Inf. Theory, 2003, 49, (2), pp. 371– 381
17 Li (Erran), L., Ramachandran, R., Buddhikot, M., Miller, S.: ‘Network
coding-based broadcast in mobile ad hoc networks’. Proc. IEEE
INFOCOM, May 2007, pp. 1739–1747
18 Yang, S., Wu, J.: ‘Efficient broadcasting using network coding and
directional antennas in MANETs’, IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst.,
2010, 21, (2), pp. 148–161
19 Widmer, J., Fragouli, C., Boudec, J.-Y.L.: ‘Low-complexity energy
efficient broadcasting in wireless ad hoc networks using network
coding’. Proc. NetCod, Riva del Garda, Italy, April 2005
20 Katti, S., Rahul, H., Hu, W., Katabi, D., Medard, M., Crowcroft, J.:
‘XORs in the air: practical wireless network coding’, IEEE Trans.
Netw., 2008, 16, pp. 497–510
21 Rout, R.R., Ghosh, S.K., Chakrabarti, S.: ‘Network coding-aware data
aggregation for a distributed wireless sensor network’. Proc. ICIIS
2009, Sri Lanka, December 2009, pp. 32–36
22 Ni, S.Y., Tseng, Y.C., Chen, Y.S., Sheu, J.P.: ‘The broadcast storm
problem in a mobile ad hoc network’. Proc. MOBICOM ’99, Seattle
Washington, USA, 1999, pp. 151 –162
23 Karp, B., Kung, H.T.: ‘GPRS: greedy perimeter stateless routing for
wireless networks’. Proc. ACM/IEEE MOBICOM, Boston, USA,
2000, pp. 243– 254
24 Bulusu, N., Heidemann, J., Estrin, D.: ‘GPS-less low-cost outdoor
localization for very small devices’, IEEE Pers. Commun., 2000, 7,
(5), pp. 28–34
25 Fekete, S.P., Kroller, A., Pfisterer, D., Fischer, S., Buschmann, C.:
‘Neighborhood-based topology recognition in sensor networks’. Proc.
Int. Workshop on ALGOSENSOR, Turku, 2004, pp. 123–136
26 Rout, R.R., Ghosh, S.K., Chakrabarti, S.: ‘A network coding based
probabilistic routing scheme for wireless sensor network’. Proc. Sixth
Int. Conf. on Wireless Communication and Sensor Networks (WCSN)
2010, IIT, Allahabad, India, December 2010, pp. 27– 32
27 Shelby, Z., Raez, C.P., Karvonen, H., Haapola, J.: ‘Energy optimization
in multihop wireless embedded and sensor networks’, Int. J. Wirel. Inf.
Netw., 2005, 12, (1), pp. 11– 21
28 Simon, G., Volgyesi, P., Maroti, M., Ledeczi, A.: ‘Simulation-based
optimization of communication protocols for large-scale wireless
sensor networks’. Proc. Aerospace Conf., March 2003, pp. 1–8
29 Mainwaring, A., Polastre, J., Szewczyk, R., Culler, D., Anderson, J.:
‘Wireless sensor networks for habitat monitoring’. Proc. First ACM
Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications, Atlanta,
Georgia, USA, September 2002, pp. 88–97
85
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012