Decentralized Random Parity Forwarding in Multi-Source Wireless Relay Networks

We propose a decentralized random parity forwarding technique in large-scale wireless networks composed of multiple sources, multiple relays, and single destination to enhance the reliability of decoding. The parity bits are generated independently and randomly at the relays and forwarded to the destination. This makes the protocol overhead minimal in coordinating the relay nodes and enables a decentralized network operation. Also, it allows relay nodes to be easily added with little overhead as the network scale increases. The presented model incorporates random distribution of nodes in the network as well as random mobility of nodes that results in a random number of cooperating relay nodes. We analyze the probability of decoding error, and the normalized throughput. We also analyze the outage probability that a selected encoding rule produces an error probability greater than a threshold. We present the energy saving and the coverage area extension provided by the random parity forwarding technique. The effect of multiple antennas at the destination and forward error correcting code at the source are analyzed.