Abstract-This paper addresses the problem of survivability of many-to-one flows in wireless networks, such as wireless mesh networks (WMNs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Traditional protection schemes are either resource-hungry like the (1 + 1) protection scheme, or introduce a delay and interrupt the network operation like the (1 : N ) protection scheme. In this paper, we present a network coding-based protection technique that overcomes the deficiencies of the traditional schemes. We derive and prove the necessary and sufficient conditions for our solution on a restricted network topology. Then we relax these connectivity requirements and show how to generalize the sufficient and necessary conditions to work with any other topology. We also show how to perform deterministic coding with {0,1} coefficients to achieve linear independence. Moreover, we discuss some of the practical considerations related to our approach. Specifically, we show how to adapt our solution when the network has a limited min-cut; we therefore define a more general problem that takes this constraint into account, which prove to be NP-complete. Furthermore, we discuss the decoding process at the sink, and show how to make use of our solution in the upstream communication (from sink to sources). We also study the effect of the proposed scheme on network performance. Finally, we consider the implementation of our approach when all network nodes have single transceivers, and we solve the problem through a greedy algorithm that constructs a feasible schedule for the transmissions from the sources.

Abstract-This paper introduces an efficient implementation of the network coding-based 1+N protection. The strategy provides proactive protection to N link-disjoint full-duplex connections against single link failures. The implementation is efficient and uses a tree shaped minimum cost protection circuit. The protection circuit carries linear combinations of data units originally transmitted on the working circuits, and these linear combinations can be used to recover data units lost due to failures. This recovery is carried out with the assistance of one node on the protection tree, which is chosen to reduce the recovery time. This protection technique requires the same amount of protection resources used by 1:N protection, where the protection circuit is link disjoint from the protected connections. The paper also makes other contributions. It introduces an Integer Linear Program (ILP) formulation to evaluate the cost of protection using this technique, and compares it to the cost of 1+1 protection. The comparison shows that a significant saving in cost can be achieved, while recovering from failures within a short time. The performance of this scheme is further evaluated using an OPNET-based simulation, where it was shown that the recovery time conforms to acceptable industry standards. Availability analysis is also conducted.

Agile recovery from link failures in autonomic communication networks is essential to increase robustness, accessibility, and reliability of data transmission. However, this must be done with the least amount of protection resources, while using simple management plane functionality. Recently, network coding has been proposed as a solution to provide agile and cost efficient network self-healing against link failures, in a manner that does not require data rerouting, packet retransmission, or failure localization, hence leading to simple control and management planes. To achieve this, separate paths have to be provisioned to carry encoded packets, hence requiring either the addition of extra links, or reserving some of the resources for this purpose.In this paper we introduce autonomic self-healing strategies for autonomic networks in order to protect against link failures. The strategies are based on network coding and reduced capacity, which is a technique that we call network protection codes (NPC). In these strategies, an autonomic network is able to provide self-healing from various network failures affecting network operation. The techniques improve service and enhance reliability of autonomic communication.Network protection codes are extended to provide self-healing from multiple link failures in autonomic networks. Although this leads to reducing the network capacity, the network capacity reduction is asymptotically small in most cases of practical interest. We provide implementation aspects of the proposed strategies. We present bounds and network protection code constructions. Furthermore tables of the best known self-healing codes are presented. Finally, we study the construction of such codes over the binary field. The paper also develops an Integer Linear Program formulation to evaluate the cost of provisioning connections using the proposed strategies, and uses results from this formulation to show that it is more resource efficient from 1+1 protection.

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