Design of Network Codes for Multiple-User Multiple-Relay Wireless Networks

We investigate the design of network codes for multiple-user multiple-relay (MUMR) wireless networks. In the networks, multiple (M >= 2) users have independent information to be transmitted to a common base station (BS), with the help of N (N >= 2) relays. The networks consist of independent quasi. static fading channels. We investigate such networks in terms of outage probabilities (to measure asymptotic performance), and propose network codes with linearly independent global encoding kernels for all possible source-relay channel situations (outage or not) to achieve asymptotic optimality. We compare the performance of proposed finite-field network coding (FFNC) and superposition coding (real-domain network coding) in the relays. The results show that proposed FFNC has better performance than superposition coding in high rate regions.