Joint network and channel coding for cooperative networks

In this paper we propose joint network and channel coding schemes for cooperative networks. The joint decoding schemes require no adjustment to either the sending or intermediary network nodes, but are achieved by describing joint network code / channel code Tanner graphs at the receiving node and applying iterative sum-product decoding. The performance of the proposed schemes are simulated on a simple ldquobutterflyrdquo network and very promising results are obtained.