Cross-layer rateless coding over wireless relay networks

The focus of the paper is on cross-layer transmission based on rateless coding for relay networks. In the proposed method, rateless coding is used at the 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, the cross-layer scheme results in earlier successful decoding at the destination.