The goal of this project is to investigate the impact of network coding on cooperative communications and to lay a theoretical foundation in this new and growing field. In their preliminary results, the PIs found that the use of analog network coding will inevitably introduce new noise during signal extraction at a destination node. Such new noise will directly affect capacity calculation and result in smaller capacity in cooperative communications. That is, the use of network coding may not always benefit cooperative communications, which is against some researchers? belief. Enlightened by this result, the PIs plan to systematically investigate the impact of network coding on cooperative communications in a general multi-session environment. The intellectual merit includes exploring and understanding various approaches in signal extraction and the potential noise introduced during the signal extraction process. Based on this new knowledge, the PIs also plan to re-visit a number of important problems that employ network coding in cooperative communications and offer new and correct understanding. Such understanding will not only offer a solid foundation for further research, but also has transformative potential to bring the existing network coding and cooperative communications theories one step closer to practice. The broader impact of this project includes the development of cross-disciplinary educational materials and courses. Throughout the PIs? experience with wireless networking research, they have found that advance materials in wireless communications are beyond the typical education for students in networking. An integral part of this project will be to bridge the gap between networking and wireless communications curricula via new cross-disciplinary courses.
