https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/tr-2007-90.pdf
In traditional wireless communication, intermediate nodes (routers or relays) act like a postal service: they receive a packet, store it, and then forward it exactly as it was.
Network Coding (NC) completely changes this. Instead of just forwarding, nodes are allowed to perform mathematical operations to combine multiple incoming packets into a single outgoing transmission. This “mixing” of data allows more information to flow through the network using fewer transmissions.
A network encoding can achieve the multicast capcity. This is not possible with routing. Suppose a link in the below graph figure can carry one bit per second. With Network encoding, we can multicast information from source node to destination or receiver nodes t1 and t2 at the rate of 2 bit/second.
Benefits of Network Encoding:
- Maximizing throughput
- Maximizing energy efficiency