The Throughput Benefits of Network Coding for SW-ARQ Communication

The throughput of a Stop-and-Wait (SW) Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) communication system is analysed in conjunction with a practical network coding (NC) scheme. In particular, the study is aimed at comparing the throughput of the SW system with and without NC in the context of a predetermined communication link. To evaluate the effects of the proposed scheme, a simulation study is carried out using the MATLAB SimEvents toolbox. The results show that practical NC offers a throughput advantage of at least 50% over traditional SWARQ, and that this is particularly noticeable in the presence of high error rates.