Analysis of Network Coded HARQ for Multiple Unicast Flows

In this paper, we consider network coded (NCed) Hybrid-ARQ (HARQ) for multiple unicast flows. The main contribution of the paper is the derivation of a throughput expression for NCed HARQ with arbitrary number of users in i.i.d. channels. We apply the result to Rayleigh fading channels for incremental redundancy (IR) and chase combining (CC) based NCed HARQ. We verify the analytical approach with simulations and observe substantial SNR (or energy) improvements over regular ARQ with network coding as well as classical (H)ARQ. The SNR gains in the high and low throughput regimes are mainly due to the network coding and HARQ aspects, respectively. For low SNRs, NCed HARQ with IR surpass the CC performance.