Network-Level Cooperative Protocols for Wireless Multicasting: Stable Throughput Analysis and Use of Network Coding

摘要

In this paper, we investigate the impact of network coding at the relay nodeon the stable throughput rate in multicasting cooperative wireless networks.The proposed protocol adopts Network-level cooperation in contrast to thetraditional physical layer cooperative protocols and in addition uses randomlinear network coding at the relay node. The traffic is assumed to be burstyand the relay node forwards its packets during the periods of source silencewhich allows better utilization for channel resources. Our results show thatcooperation will lead to higher stable throughput rates than conventionalretransmission policies and that the use of random linear network coding at therelay can further increase the stable throughput with increasing Network Codingfield size or number of packets over which encoding is performed.