Throughput Analysis of General Network Coding Nodes Based on SW-ARQ Transmission

The steady-state throughput of general network coding node is investigated, when data is transmitted in packets based on the stop-and-wait automatic repeat request (SW-ARQ) error-control scheme. The general network coding node has H number of incoming links that provide packets for forming the coded packets transmitted by one outgoing link. Each of the incoming and outgoing links is assumed to have some buffers for storing the temporary data packets. The state transition of the general network coding node is modelled by a finite state machine, and its steady-state throughput is derived based on the properties of discrete-time Markov chain. Furthermore, the throughput performance of the general network coding node is investigated either by simulations or by evaluation of the expressions derived in this paper. Our performance results show that the analytical expressions obtained can be well justified by the simulation results. Furthermore, it can be shown that the packet error rate, the amount of buffer and the number of incoming links may impose significant impact on the achievable throughput of the general network coding nodes.