Practical Wireless Network Coding

One embodiment is directed to transmitting encoded data over a broadcast medium to improve network throughput. A sending node may identify a first packet to be transmitted to a first network node and a second packet to be transmitted to a second network node. The sending node may determine whether the first network node stores the second packet and whether the second network node stores the first packet. If the sending node determines that the first network node stores the second packet and the second network node stores the first packet, it may code together the first and second packets to generate an encoded packet and may transmit the encoded packet over the broadcast medium. Thus, the first packet may be transmitted to the first network node and the second packet may be transmitted to the second node in a single transmission.