A Practical Approach to Adaptive Coding for the Three-Node Relay Channel

In this paper we propose a new adaptive coding scheme for distributed channel coding for the three-node relay channel. In order to make it feasible for application in wireless sensor networks, the distributed code is built from standard components like Turbo and convolutional codes, and adaptation at the relay is obtained by puncturing the input and output of the employed channel code. The proposed code structure includes distributed Turbo codes and distributed serially concatenated codes as special cases. As the results of our optimization show, significant improvements in terms of rate and coverage are obtained. Compared to theoretical limits a decent performance is achieved considering that the focus is on feasibility.