Search

Relay transmissions play an important role in many types of communication systems. In this paper, we consider packet-level coded transmissions over lossy relay links with the finite-buffer and coding coefficients delivery cost constraints. We propose a low-complexity coding scheme where packets are encoded from sequentially formed random subsets of source packets called batches. The relay recodes only from the buffered packets belonging to the same batch to maintain the code sparsity, lowering the packet header overhead and the decoding complexity compared to the random linear network coding (RLNC). To analyze the performance, we first propose an absorbing Markov chain model to analyze the RLNC transmission over finite-buffer relay links. The finite-length analysis not only provides a lower bound on the completion time using any sparser random codes but also characterizes each individual batch’s transmission of the proposed code. Based on the analysis, another Markov chain is proposed to determine the decoding failure probability and the expected completion time of the batch coding scheme. As shown through analysis and simulations, the proposed scheme achieves higher effective end-to-end rates than RLNC when the coding coefficients delivery cost is considered and is also with much lowered decoding complexity thanks to its sparseness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for wideband communication in the coastal area (i.e., ≤ 100 km from the coastline) has been rapidly increasing in recent years. Compared to the terrestrial scenario, the coastal environment has long-distance and highly dynamic channels, and the communication devices are more strictly constrained by energy supplies. While the RLNC has the fountain erasure-correction property and is suitable for transmissions over the long-distance dynamic channels, it suffers from high coding coefficient delivery cost and decoding complexity. In this article, we look into the application of sparse network coding in coastal communication systems. We identify two typical multicast scenarios that may appear in coastal communications, namely the relay-aided multicast and multicast from a shore-based base station with D2D communication enabled among the subscribers. We provide a detailed comparison of existing sparse network coding schemes. Based on that, we demonstrate through simulations that an appropriate choice of sparse codes is critical to meet the unique requirements in coastal communication systems. We show that batched sparse code is suitable for relay-aided multicast, and subset-based sparse codes are preferable for D2D-enabled multicast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]