This paper addresses the problem of reducing the delivery time of data
messages to cellular users using instantly decodable network coding (IDNC) with
physical-layer rate awareness. While most of the existing literature on IDNC
does not consider any physical layer complications and abstract the model as
equally slotted time for all users, this paper proposes a cross-layer scheme
that incorporates the different channel rates of the various users in the
decision process of both the transmitted message combinations and the rates
with which they are transmitted. The consideration of asymmetric rates for
receivers reflects more practical application scenarios and introduces a new
trade-off between the choice of coding combinations for various receivers and
the broadcasting rate for achieving shorter completion time. The completion
time minimization problem in such scenario is first shown to be intractable.
The problem is, thus, approximated by reducing, at each transmission, the
increase of an anticipated version of the completion time. The paper solves the
problem by formulating it as a maximum weight clique problem over a newly
designed rate aware IDNC (RA-IDNC) graph. The highest weight clique in the
created graph being potentially not unique, the paper further suggests a
multi-layer version of the proposed solution to improve the obtained results
from the employed completion time approximation. Simulation results indicate
that the cross-layer design largely outperforms the uncoded transmissions
strategies and the classical IDNC scheme