In the multicast network, network coding has proven to be an effective technique to approach maximum flow capacity. Although network coding has the advantage of improving performance, encoding nodes increases the cost and delay in wireless networks. Therefore, minimizing encoding nodes is of great significance to improve the actual network’s performance under a maximum multicast flow. This paper seeks to achieve partial improvements in the existing selection algorithm of encoding nodes in wireless networks. Firstly, the article gives the condition for an intermediate node to be an encoding node. Secondly, a maximum flow algorithm, which depends on the depth-first search method, is proposed to optimize the search time by selecting the larger augmentation flow in each step. Finally, we construct a random graph model to simulate the wireless network and the maximum multicast flow algorithm to analyze the statistical characteristics of encoding nodes. This paper aims at the optimization to find the minimal number of required coding nodes which means the minimum energy consumption. Meanwhile, the simulations indicate that the curve of coding nodes tends to be a geometric distribution, and that the curve of the maximum flow tends to be symmetric as the network scale and the node covering radius increase.
Node Selection Algorithm for Network Coding in the Mobile Wireless Network