The selection of routes is an important issue in wireless networks when network coding is used. Existing research formulate network-coding-aware routing as a linear optimization program. However, deploying such method in real wireless networks is impractical. To solve this issue, in this paper, a practical network-coding aware routing protocol is proposed for unicast sessions in wireless networks. The protocol is based on a novel routing metric design that captures the characteristics of network coding and unicast sessions. To ensure the novel routing metric can operate with practical and widely available path calculation mechanisms, a unique mapping process is used to map a real wireless network to a virtual network. The mapping process ensures that the paths with the biggest coding opportunities will be selected by commonly used path calculation mechanisms. Simulation results show that the proposed routing protocol is effective.

Real-time applications in ad hoc networks require fast route repair mechanisms to minimize the interruptions to their communications. Cache-based route repair schemes are popular choices since they can quickly resume communications using cached backup paths after a route break. In this paper, through thorough theoretical modeling of the cache-based route repair process, we derive the optimal cache-based route repair policy. This optimal policy considers both the overhead of the route repair schemes and the promptness of the repair action. The correctness and advantages of our optimal policy are validated by extensive simulations.