Complex Field Network Coding for Multi-Source Multi-Relay Single-Destination UAV Cooperative Surveillance Networks

Relay-based cooperative communication for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks can obtain spatial diversity gains, expand coverage, and potentially increase the network capacity. A multi-source multi-relay single-destination structure is the main topology structure for UAV cooperative surveillance networks, which is similar to the structure of network coding (NC). Compared with conventional NC schemes, complex field network coding (CFNC) can achieve a higher throughput and is introduced to surveillance networks in this paper. According to whether there is a direct communication link between any source drone and the destination, the information transfer mechanism at the downlink is set to one of two modes, either mixed or relay transmission, and two corresponding irregular topology structures for CFNC-based networks are proposed. Theoretical analysis and simulation results with an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel show that the CFNC obtains a throughput as high as 1/2 symbol per source per channel use. Moreover, the CFNC applied to the proposed irregular structures under the two transmission modes can achieve better reliability due to full diversity gain as compared to that based on the regular structure. Moreover, the reliability of the CFNC scheme can continue to be improved by combining channel coding and modulation techniques at the expense of rate loss.