Convolutional network codes for reliable point-to-point wireless communication

This paper considers the idea of using convolutional network codes to code across blocks of packets at the transmitter in order to increase the reliability of a wireless link. The encoding and decoding operations exploit traditional convolutional codes and Viterbi decoders, respectively, and are defined in such a way to be compatible with existing technologies. We present results for the packet error rate (PER) of various convolutional network coding schemes and show that there is a steep decline in the PERs as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) increases. We also show that it is possible to achieve large coding gains when a soft network decoder is used.