A Unified Channel-Network Coding Treatment for User Cooperation in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

We propose a combined channel-network coding solution for efficient user cooperation in wireless ad-hoc networks that comprise a host of terminals communicating to a common destination. The proposed framework, termed generalized adaptive network coded cooperation or GANCC, addresses the challenge of inter-user outage, which widely persists in practical cooperation scenarios, by adaptively matching code graphs to instantaneous network graphs (topologies). Additionally, GANCC treats channel codes as an integral part of the network code, and in doing so not only extracts the most benefit from these codes but also provides a live example supporting the notion that network codes are generalization of channel codes (as well as source codes)