Maximizing throughput in RLNC-based multi-source multi-relay with guaranteed decoding

In this paper, an efficient and practical solution to cope with random linear network coding (RLNC) drawbacks and maximize the system throughput is proposed. No header overheads and no retransmissions are required as a result of the introduction of a unique codebook at the nodes in charge of RLNC coding and decoding. The codebook contains the seeds that allow for the pseudo-random generation of fullrank matrices of network coding elements over the finite Galois field GF(q), where q is the field size, for N generations. Each relay generates the same matrix and uses its corresponding row of N coding GF(q) coefficients. The destination, whose seeds codebook is synchronized on the same index value, generates the same full-rank matrix to decode the source nodes packets. Results show that the number of successfully transmitted packets is not generally affected by the choice of the generation size or the underlying finite field, which demonstrates the outperformance of the proposed technique over the traditional RLNC procedure. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.