In a wireless storage system, having to communicate over a fading channel makes repair transmissions prone to physical layer errors. The first approach to combat fading is to utilize the existing optimal space-time codes. However, it was recently pointed out that such codes are in general too complex to decode when the number of helper nodes is bigger than the number of antennas at the newcomer or data collector. In this paper, a novel protocol for wireless storage transmissions based on algebraic space-time codes is presented in order to improve the system reliability while enabling feasible decoding. The diversity-multiplexing gain tradeoff (DMT) of the system together with sphere-decodability even with low number of antennas are used as the main design criteria, thus naturally establishing a DMT-complexity tradeoff. It is shown that the proposed protocol outperforms the simple time-division multiple access (TDMA) protocol, while still falling behind the optimal DMT.
Recently, were introduced in @cite_14 as class of codes that should be able to resist fading of the signals during repair transmissions, while also maintaining the repair property of the underlying storage code. It was pointed out that the obvious way of constructing such codes, namely combining an optimal storage code and an optimal space-time code results in infeasible decoding complexity, when the number of helper nodes is bigger than the number of antennas at the newcomer or data collector (DC). Motivated by this work, we tackle the complexity issue and design a novel yet simple protocol that has feasible decoding complexity for any number of helpers, while the helpers and the newcomer DC are only required to have at most two antennas each.
@cite_14
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Distributed storage systems (DSSs) have gained a lot of interest recently, thanks to their robustness and scalability compared to single-device storage. Majority of the related research has exclusively concerned the network layer. At the same time, the number of users of, e.g., peer-to-peer (p2p) and device-to-device (d2d) networks as well as proximity based services is growing rapidly, and the mobility of users is considered more and more important. This motivates, in contrast to the existing literature, the study of the physical layer functionality of wireless distributed storage systems. In this paper, we take the first step towards protecting the storage repair transmissions from physical layer errors when the transmission takes place over a fading channel. To this end, we introduce the notion of a space-time storage code, drawing together the aspects of network layer and physical layer functionality and resulting in cross-layer robustness. It is also pointed out that existing space-time codes are too complex to be utilized in storage networks when the number of helpers involved is larger than the number of receive antennas at the newcomer or data collector, hence creating a call for less complex transmission protocols.