Performance Analysis Of MIMO Network Coding

In the beginning of this century, the proposal of network coding has indicated a new development direction for the improvement of network transmission capacity. Based on some research facts, network coding scheme can achieve the maximum streaming transmission in principle, as well as solve the transmission bottleneck problem for the relay node effectively, all of these facts are making network coding the hot spot in research area.In wireless networks, there are a lot of problems in applying network coding, for example, multipath fading. In this case, there is a frequent data packet loss, and it will largely affect the performance of the network coding. MIMO is a good technology to fight with fading, and it will significantly improve the performance for network coding under a fading channel. The new MIMO Network Coding is an excellent solution.This thesis first analyzed the concept of network coding, the current research status both in China and abroad, and several concepts of common physical layer network coding, as well as space-time coding technology and advanced sphere decoding algorithm. All of these above laid a theoretical foundation for this research project.This thesis made a deep research in the MIMO Network Coding which combination of MIMO and network coding. It introduced the system model of MIMO Network Coding and the process of both encoding and decoding, analyzed its performance like bit error rate and diversity gain, and verified the theoretical correctness by simulation experiments. Based on the research, it is shown that in flat fading channels, MIMO Network Coding can bring 2-3dB gain comparing to traditional network coding, besides, the performance of MIMO Network Coding will get better with the increase of nodes, at the mean time it will gain similar MIMO diversity.