Cross-layer rateless coding over wireless relay channel

This paper focuses on cross-layer transmission based on rateless coding for relay channels. In the proposed method, rateless coding is used at packet level and a separate physical layer coding is used at the physical layer. As rateless codes are originally designed and optimized for erasure channels, using these codes at the physical layer can lead to significant performance degradation. The proposed scheme has the advantage of a cross-layer design which uses a rateless code at the packet level modeled by an erasure channel. Based on the analysis and simulation results provided in this paper, there is an exact tradeoff between physical layer code rate and rateless code depth, and the optimum value of the physical layer code rate can minimize the average transmission time.