Practical network coding on three-node point-to-point relay networks

Abstract

We study the three-node point-to-point relay network which consists of two terminal nodes and one relay node between them and investigate practical network coding schemes for the network. The rate region achievable by the practical network coding schemes is obtained, and a procedure for constructing the linear network codes that achieve the rate pairs in the achievable rate region is presented. In addition, we show that the use of network coding rather than routing alone enlarges the achievable rate region, in particular increases the maximum equal-rate throughput.