Performance of general network coding nodes with stop-and-wait automatic repeat request transmission

The steady-state performance of general network coding node is investigated, when data are transmitted in packets based on the stop-and-wait automatic repeat request error-control scheme. The general network coding node considered has H number of incoming links that provide packets for forming the coded packets transmitted by one outgoing link. Each of the incoming and outgoing links is assumed to have some buffers for temporarily storing the data packets. The state transition of the general network coding node is modelled by a finite state machine, and its steady-state performance is derived based on the properties of discrete-time Markov chain. Specifically, the throughput, blocking probability and the distribution of contents are analysed, when the general network coding node is operated in the steady state. The performance of the general network coding node is investigated either by simulations or by evaluation of the formulas derived in this study. The performance results show that the analytical formulas obtained can be well justified by the simulation results. Furthermore, it can be shown that the packet error rate, the capacity of buffer and the number of incoming links may impose significant impact on the performance of general network coding node.