Breaking the Spectrum-Reliability Trade-off in Maritime Relay Networks: A Novel Coded Transmission Scheme

As a critical application scenario for 6 G networks, maritime relay networks enable long-distance data transmission. Towards the goal of efficient and reliable data transmission, we propose a novel block Markov superposition transmission (BMST)-coded physical-layer network coding (PNC) scheme tailored for maritime two-way relay networks (TWRNs). To adapt to dynamic and harsh oceanic conditions, we integrate a class of multiple-rate codes with fixed code length, i.e., repetition and single-parity-check (RSPC) codes, into the proposed scheme. Additionally, an iterative decoding and computing (DC) algorithm is proposed to minimize the loss of useful information at relay nodes. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves superior performance in maritime relay-assisted communications, offering significant improvements in both reliability and spectral efficiency under challenging oceanic conditions.