Adaptive Cooperative Network Coding based MAC protocol for device-to-device communication

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication allows the direct connection of mobile devices in a cellular network. In D2D networking, cooperative communication is inherent due to the proximity of the devices that are able to overhear and forward information. Particularly, adjacent devices can act as relays and assist the communication of other devices. Network Coding (NC) can further increase the cooperation gains, since a number of packets can be encoded and transmitted together. However, the contention among multiple relays causes channel access issues that must be regulated by effective Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols. In this context, we propose an Adaptive Cooperative Network Coding-based MAC (ACNC-MAC) protocol that utilizes cooperative relaying and exploits NC opportunities in a D2D topology. Both analytical and simulation results show that the proposed protocol is advantageous in terms of energy efficiency without sacrificing the Quality of Service (QoS).