Performance evaluation of joint relay selection and network coding for multi-source and multi-destination relay network

Network coding and relay selection have attracted significant attention due to their performance improvement and spectral efficiency in wireless networks. In this work, we study joint relay selection and network coding cooperation schemes for M source-destination pairs assisted with N relays. We propose a new smart decode-and-forward max-min relay selection scheme based on the source-destination links’ outage status and L selected relays to enhance the communication system diversity. Our objective is realize joint network coding and relay selection strategies for maximizing the expected number of recovered packets by the intended destinations in various situations. We analyze the performance of the proposed scheme and prove that the maximum diversity order of N+1 is achieved when the number of active relays is at least ⌈N+1/3⌉ . Also, we show that the scheme can achieve a diversity order of 3 L when L<⌈N+1/3⌉ . Our analytical and simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme provides higher performance than the existing network coded cooperation schemes.