Capacity Enhancement in Hybrid Wireless Relay Network with Network Coding

Network coding technique increases wireless network communication efficiency. Wireless multihop relay network has been shown to achieve capacity gain over conventional single-hop wireless networks. Hybrid wireless relay networks integrate multihop ad hoc relay and infrastructure base stations to achieve better wireless network performance. Applying the promising network coding technique to hybrid wireless relay networks could increase wireless network capacity. Capacity of multihop cellular network with network coding is derived. To enhance network throughput, data forwarding strategy is proposed to determine if a packet should be transmitted through intra-cell ad hoc relay, inter-cell ad hoc relay, or infrastructure-assisted inter-cell transmission.