Performance evaluation of channel detection for the cooperative network coding in the wireless relay network

Network coding is regarded as a promising technique to improve system throughput of the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) system. The channel detection technique plays a significant role in the cooperative relay network with network coding. In this paper, an minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) joint detection strategy for the cooperative network coding is proposed. The receiver utilizes the direct link signals and the forwarding network coded signal for joint detection, and recovers the source data of multiple users. It is shown that with the MMSE joint detection, the relay network with network coding shows better system performance with lower backhaul cost and higher system throughput than the traditional relay network at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In addition, as the number of users increases, the network coding scheme based on the proposed channel detection brings a more significant improvement in throughput at high SNR.