Systematic network coding with overlap for IoT scenarios

Abstract

The presence of IoT in current networking scenarios is more relevant every day. IoT covers a wide range of applications, ranging from wearable devices to vehicular communications. With the consolidation of Industry 4.0, IIoT (Industrial IoT) environments are becoming more common. Communications in these scenarios are mostly wireless, and due to the lossy nature of wireless communications, the loss of information becomes an intrinsic problem. However, loss recovery schemes increase the delay that characterizes any communication. On the other hand, both reliability (robustness) and low delay are crucial requirements for some applications in IIoT. An interesting strategy to improve both of them is the use of Network Coding techniques, which have shown promising results, in terms of increasing reliability and performance. This work focuses on a possible new coding approach, based on systematic network coding scheme with overlapping generations. We perform a thorough analysis of its behavior. Based on the results, we draw out a number of conclusions for practical implementations in wireless networks, focusing our interest in IIoT environments.