Short message noisy network coding with a decode-forward option

Short message noisy network coding (SNNC) differs from long message noisy network coding (LNNC) in that one transmits many short messages in blocks rather than using one long message with repetitive encoding. Two properties of SNNC are developed. First, SNNC with backward decoding achieves the same rates as SNNC with offset encoding and sliding window decoding for memoryless networks where each node transmits a multicast message. The rates are the same as LNNC with joint decoding. Second, SNNC enables early decoding if the channel quality happens to be good. This leads to mixed strategies that unify the advantages of decode-forward and noisy network coding.