The Uplink of Distributed MIMO: Wireless Network Coding versus Coordinated Multipoint

In this paper, we propose an advanced transmission protocol for the next generation wireless access network using wireless network coding (WNC). As an alternative to conventional cooperative multipoint (CoMP) as described in LTE-A, WNC enables access point cooperation, combining the flows using network coding functions, instead of sending multiple separate information flows across the backhaul network. WNC in principle enables this cooperation with less backhaul load than CoMP transmission, while providing superior performance compared with CoMP in terms of outage probability.