Rate Aware Instantly Decodable Network Codes

This paper addresses the problem of reducing the delivery time of data messages to cellular users using instantly decodable network coding (IDNC) with physical-layer rate awareness. While most of the existing literature on IDNC does not consider any physical layer complications, this paper proposes a cross-layer scheme that incorporates the different channel rates of the various users in the decision process of both the transmitted message combinations and the rates with which they are transmitted. The completion time minimization problem in such scenario is first shown to be intractable. The problem is, thus, approximated by reducing, at each transmission, the increase of an anticipated version of the completion time. The paper solves the problem by formulating it as a maximum weight clique problem over a newly designed rate aware IDNC (RA-IDNC) graph. Further, the paper provides a multi-layer solution to improve the completion time approximation. Simulation results suggest that the cross-layer design largely outperforms the uncoded transmissions strategies and the classical IDNC scheme.