Patent ID: 8155048

Claim:
A method for transmitting a message from a source node, via a set of relay nodes, to a destination node, wherein a source entropy of the message is X nats, and wherein the set of relay nodes includes a node i and a node j following node i, and the set of relay nodes are connected by wireless links, and each link has a channel power gain γ ij , and the transmitting has a time constraint T, comprising a processor for performing steps of the method, comprising the step of: minimizing a number of nats x i in the message to be transmitted from the node i to the next node j, wherein the next node j is guaranteed to receive a number of accumulated nats x ac from one or more previous transmissions, such that a sum of the number of nats x i and the number of accumulated nats x ac is not less than the source entropy X; allocating a set of resources for transmitting the message from the node i to the next node j; and transmitting the message from the node i to the node j using the set of resources, wherein the steps are performed in the processor.