We consider a line of terminals which is connected by packet erasure
channels and where random linear coding is carried out at each node
prior to transmission. In particular, we address an online approach in
which each terminal has local information to be conveyed to the base
station at the end of the line and provide a queueing theoretic
analysis of this scenario. First, a genie-aided scenario is considered
and the average delay and overall energy consumption depending on the
link erasure probabilities and the arrival rates at each node are
analyzed. We then assume that all terminals cannot send and receive at
the same time. The transmitting terminals in the network send coded
data packets before stopping to wait for the receiving terminals to
acknowledge the number of degrees of freedom, if any, that are
required to decode correctly the information. We analyze this problem
for an infinite queue size at the terminals and show that there is an
optimal number of coded data packets at each node, in terms of average
completion time, to be sent before stopping to listen. Further, we
compare the average delay and energy consumption with the results from
the above genie-aided case.