Optimization on Cooperative Communications Based on Network Coding in Multi-hop Wireless Networks

Cooperative communications (CC) based on network coding (NC) can significantly increase the capacity of wireless networks. In this paper, we investigate how to apply NC in multi-hop wireless networks with multiple relay nodes and multiple sessions to achieve more practical and general CC based on NC. Based on NC, we consider to jointly optimize relay node selecting, scheduling and flow routing in CC in a multi-hop wireless network. We not only construct a mathematical model but also formulate a maximum-minimum (Max-Min) optimization problem for it. Then we reformulate and solve it with CPLEX. Through simulation, we validate that the achieved rate gain by NC can be greatly improved than the one by CC.