Scalability of two-way relay channel network coding in a relay enhanced LTE cell

Scalability of network coding (NC) for a two-way relay channel (TWRC) is investigated in a scenario where the multiple user equipments (UEs) are served by one relay station (RS) in a single Long Term Evolution (LTE) cell. In this context, the NC is employed independently over the multiple TWRCs formed by each UE, and more importantly, assuming that the radio resources are shared by all the UEs in the cell. The performance of this NC scheme is assessed in terms of the radio overhead energy reduction gain (ERG), the throughput gain and the number of resource blocks (RBs) saved due to NC. The operational energy consumptions of the base station (eNB) and of the RS are also considered in our analysis. It is found that the gains due to NC are scalable with the number of UEs and with the offered traffic load in the cell. Furthermore, since the operational energy dominates the overall energy consumption, the corresponding ERG of the NC is almost independent of the number of UEs.