Extended Abstract: Superposition Coding for Wireless Mesh Networks

A major barrier for the adoption of wireless mesh networks is severe limits on throughput. In this paper, the authors apply superposition coding to substantially improve network capacity of large, dense wireless mesh networks. Superposition coding is a physical layer technique that allows a transmitter to simultaneously send independent packets to multiple receivers. While superposition coding has been studied extensively by the physical layer community, they present the first design of practical and effective MAC protocols to take advantage of superposition coding in wireless mesh networks. Extensive evaluations show that superposition coding can be a practical method to increase the throughput of large, dense wireless mesh networks.