Joint network-channel code design for real wireless relay networks

Joint network-channel coding (JNCC) has attracted significant interests recently to improve the reliability of data transmission in a large network. Adaptive network coded cooperation (ANCC) is one of these numerous works that combine network and channel coding to match network-on-graph to code-on-graph. Since the network consists of unpredictable fading channels, the link failure and time varying network topology have to be considered. In this paper, we consider an extreme channel condition where the relays fail to decode the received information to create parity check symbols, this results in no protection for the corresponding information messages at the sink. We present a channel selection solution and investigate the performance of the proposed scheme. Furthermore, based on the proposed scheme, a repeat accumulate (RA) code structure is introduced into the JNCC design by following an extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart and simulation results show a considerable performance improvement.