A Multi-Relay Scheme for the Multi-Source Multi-Cast Network

A multi-relay scheme is developed for networks with multiple sources. By this scheme, each source is sent to its destination nodes via a multi-relay route, and the multiple multi-relay routes from the multiple sources can operate at the same time even if they intersect with each other, in the same spirit of the code-division multiple-access (CDMA). It is found that in the generalization to multiple sources, the backward decoding achieves higher rates than the sliding-window decoding. The corresponding achievable rate region is characterized. Potential applications of this scheme to sensor networks are discussed, where capacity results in certain scenarios are established