Joint channel-network coding with rateless code in two-way relay system

In this paper, we design a joint channel-network coding scheme based on rateless code for the three-stage two-way relay system, where two terminals send messages to each other through a relay between them. Each terminal takes one of the first two stages to encode its message using a Raptor Code and then broadcasts the result into the air, respectively. In the third stage, upon successfully decoding the corresponding messages, the relay node re-encodes them with the new Raptor Codes, and then XORs the outputs and broadcasts the result to both terminals. Together with the packets received directly in previous stages, each terminal then retrieves the desired message using an iterative decoder. Here, the degree profiles of the Raptor Codes used at each node are jointly optimized through solving a set of linear programming problems. Simulations show that, the system throughput achieved by the optimized degree profiles always outperforms the one with conventional degree profile optimized for binary erasure channel (BEC) and the conventional network coding scheme with rateless coding.