2013/01/28 by Christian Koller, Koller, Christian, Martin Haenggi +7
Computer Science · Engineering · Mathematics · #Advanced MIMO Systems Optimization #Cooperative Communication and Network Coding #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information Theory (cs.IT) #Wireless Communication Security Techniques #cs.IT #math.IT
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1301.6426
Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communications, Dec. 2012
arxiv created 2013/01/28 · openalex publication_date 2013/01/28 · arxiv updated 2013/01/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Channel coding alone is not sufficient to reliably transmit a message of finite length K from a source to one or more destinations as in, e.g., file transfer. To ensure that no data is lost, it must be combined with rateless erasure correcting schemes on a higher layer, such as a time-division multiple access (TDMA) system paired with automatic repeat request (ARQ) or random linear network coding (RLNC). We consider binary channel coding on a binary symmetric channel (BSC) and q-ary RLNC for erasure correction in a star network, where Y sources send messages to each other with the help of a central relay. In this scenario RLNC has been shown to have a throughput advantage over TDMA schemes as K and q tend to infinity. In this paper we focus on finite block lengths and compare the expected throughputs of RLNC and TDMA. For a total message length of K bits, which can be subdivided into blocks of smaller size prior to channel coding, we obtain the channel coding rate and the number of blocks that maximize the expected throughput of both RLNC and TDMA, and we find that TDMA is more throughput-efficient for small message lengths K and small q.