Analysis of Linear Network Coding in Cooperative Multi-hop Networks

We investigate the performance of two multi-hop network topologies in which two sources have independent information to be transmitted to a far off common destination. Linear network coding technique is used by the intermediate relays to transmit the combined information of two sources. The first topology contains nodes that are placed in a regular pattern and the transmission process is modeled with a quasi-stationary Markov chain. The relay nodes use decode and forward mechanism at each hop. We find the transition probability matrix of the Markov chain assuming that all the nodes have same transmit power and the channel is Rayleigh fading. The second random network topology has fixed number of nodes that are randomly placed in a strip-shaped network. The outage probability of each node is found and the state distribution at each hop is used to analyze the network coverage for a given signal-to-noise ratio margin. Theoretical results have been included that match with the simulation results.