Network Coded Repetition: A Method to Recover Lost Packets in Vehicular Communications

Rapidly repeating the original packet multiple times has been found to improve the probability of successful reception of a packet in error-prone vehicular communication environment. However, since each repetition increases channel load, performance of repetition-based loss recovery starts to deteriorate with increasing number of vehicles on the road. This paper explores the benefit of Network Coding in improving the performance of repetition-based loss recovery for vehicular safety communications. A simple network coded repetition scheme is proposed, which combines (XORs) packets from close-by neighbours and repeats the XORed packets instead of original packets, thereby creating the possibility of an increased number of packet recovery per repetition.