Practical Wireless Network Coding and Decoding Methods for Multiple Unicast Transmissions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a practical wireless network coding and decoding approach that leverages spatial diversity and linear block codes, enabling flexible diversity assignment and near-optimal detection in multiple unicast networks.

Contribution

It presents a novel wireless network coding scheme using greedy codes, an optimal detection rule considering node errors, and a sum-product decoder with near-optimal performance.

Findings

Flexible diversity orders achieved through greedy codes

Optimal detection rule accounts for intermediate node errors

Sum-product decoder exhibits near-optimal performance

Abstract

We propose a simple yet effective wireless network coding and decoding technique. It utilizes spatial diversity through cooperation between nodes which carry out distributed encoding operations dictated by generator matrices of linear block codes. For this purpose, we make use of greedy codes over the binary field and show that desired diversity orders can be flexibly assigned to nodes in a multiple unicast network, contrary to the previous findings in the literature. Furthermore, we present the optimal detection rule for the given model that accounts for intermediate node errors and suggest a network decoder using the sum-product algorithm. The proposed sum-product detector exhibits near optimal performance.