Back-pressure-based packet-by-packet adaptive routing in communication networks
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON)
| Hi-index | 754.84 |
This paper provides a solution to the question of how, when and where to perform inter-session network coding for a general network model both under wired and wireless conditions. In particular, an original queuing architecture and a dynamic routing-scheduling-coding strategy are introduced for serving multiple sessions when linear network coding is allowed across sessions. This policy provides a novel extension to the class of back-pressure policies by incorporating inter-session coding decisions via simple rules on the relevant queue-length levels. Despite the fact that the capacity region of inter-session coding is a challenging open problem, in this paper, we prove that our algorithm can support any set of rates in a nontrivial characterized region of achievable rates. In addition to its practical implications, this work also provides a theoretical framework in which the gains of inter-session network coding and pure routing can be compared.