Sachin Katti : POMI 2020 Workshop

Wireless is becoming the preferred mode of network access. The performance of wireless networks in practice, however, is hampered due to the harsh characteristics of the wireless medium: its shared broadcast nature, interference, and high error rate. Traditionally, network designers have viewed these characteristics as problematic, and tried to work around them. In this talk, I will show how we can turn these challenges into opportunities that we exploit to significantly improve performance.

To do so, we use a simple yet fundamental shift in network design. We allow routers to "mix" (i.e., code) packets' content before forwarding them. We built three systems, COPE, ANC and MIXIT, which exploit this network coding functionality via novel algorithms to provide large practical gains. In this talk, I will discuss COPE and ANC; COPE exploits wireless broadcast, while ANC exploits strategic interference to improve throughput.