Spatial Diversity with Network Coding for ON/OFF Satellite Channels

• Published in: IEEE communications letters Vol. 17; no. 8; pp. 1612 - 1615
• Main Authors: Alegre-Godoy, R., Vazquez-Castro, M. A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.08.2013; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Coding, codes; Earth; Exact sciences and technology; Fading; Information, signal and communications theory; Modeling; Network coding; Receivers; satellite; Satellite telecommunications. Space telecommunications; Satellites; Services and terminals of telecommunications; Signal and communications theory; spatial diversity; Switching and signalling; system outage; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Telemetry. Remote supervision. Telewarning. Remote control; Wireless sensor networks; Packet switching; Outage; Wireless telecommunication; Space diversity; Satellite telecommunication; System design; Random coding; system outage; Remote sensing; Linear coding; Satellite links; Simulation; Network coding; spatial diversity; Optimal code; Wireless network; Delay time; satellite; Sensor array; Signal detection; On off effect
• ISSN: 1089-7798; 1558-2558
• DOI: 10.1109/LCOMM.2013.062113.130963

In this letter, we investigate the advantages of network coding (NC) combined with spatial diversity (SD) in scenarios with multiple sources, a single satellite and a single receiver. Each link source-satellite is modeled as an ON/OFF channel. We show that our system matches a wide number of realistic scenarios, from Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) to Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN). We propose employing random linear network coding (RLNC) together with SD to reduce the system outage probability with respect to traditional SD scheme. The theoretical expressions we derive and the simulations performed show that the proposed scheme significantly reduces the system outage probability for a wide range of channel conditions. Moreover, we also propose a method for obtaining the optimal code rate constrained to a maximum system outage probability, which can serve as system design methodology.