Joint Physical Layer Network-Channel Decoding for the Multiple-Access Relay Channel

In this paper, a physical-layer network coding (PNC) method is offered for a two-way relay network with spatial modulation (SM) for source node and relay node. For this purpose, we consider a two-way relay network consists of a single relay node and two source nodes both equipped with multiple antennas. It includes two source nods for transferring the data through SM and also, the relay node for decrypting coded packet network (through the XOR) of two packets received from the source node. In the proposed method, the signal detection approach with maximum-likelihood for the PNC with SM modulation is used for relay nodes. The simulation results show that the bit error rate (BER) in the relay node of the proposed method is significantly improved compared to the conventional method PNC; while the data rate is based on the same BER. It is worth mentioning that the performance of the proposed method, when the number of antenna nodes rises, is significant. And it leads to increase in the data rate which indicates that the proposed method will be much convenient for the next generation of wireless communication systems, especially the fifth generation. It should also be said that the suggested SM-based PNC method, does not need channel state information at transmitter. So it can be easily implemented in practice.

In this paper we consider a two-way relaying system, where two users A and B wish to exchange information with the help of a common relay R., To decode the superimposed signal from A and B efficiently, we propose a new scheme of jointing physical layer network coding (PNC) and channel decoding for multiple-access channel based on trellis coded modulation (TCM). Since TCM combines channel coding with modulation, the scheme improves the free distance of the coding sequence, thus more encoding gain is achieved. In addition, taking advantage of the linearity of convolutional code and MAC-XOR NC code, the digital bits of network coding are estimated directly. In a word, we propose a novel scheme which considers channel coding, modulation and PNC at the same time, so that not only the information transmission rate is increased, but also the reliability is improved.

Recently, in multi-way relay systems employing physical-layer network coding (PNC), channel condition-based pair selection for pairwise information exchange has drawn increased attention as it provides improved performance over the alternative approaches such as round-robin scheduling of node pairs. With pairwise information exchange, there is additional time diversity available due to transmission of the same coded information block of most of the nodes twice in two adjacent time slots. This additional time diversity can be exploited to further enhance the system performance by means of joint channel decoding-network coding. To this end, a joint belief propagation (BP)-based channel decoding-network coding algorithm was proposed by us in [9] for the relay node of low density parity check (LDPC)-coded multi-way relay systems. Even though the algorithm of [9] offers much superior performance over separate channel decoding, it is highly computational expensive and may not be suitable for applications in wireless sensor networks. Alternatively, bit-flipping (BF)-based LDPC decoding can be adopted at much lower computational complexity. In this paper, we develop a low complexity joint bit-flipping (BF)-based channel decoding and network coding algorithm for LDPC-based multi-way relay systems. The BER performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated using computer simulation for two commonly used LDPC codes. The simulation results demonstrate that superior BER performance can be achieved using the proposed joint decoding algorithm over separate and independent bit-flipping-based LDPC channel decoding at the relay. The simulation results also verify that our proposed algorithm is capable of harnessing the aforesaid additional time diversity available. Though the performance of the proposed joint decoding algorithm is inferior to the BP-based algorithm of [9], due to its low computationally complexity, this algorithm may be appealing for applications in relay nodes with low computational capabilities and memory constraints.

Physical layer network coding (PNC) is a novel technique that allows two users to exchange messages in a wireless network. PNC takes place at a relay node and exploits the interference caused by incoming signals from the two users to increase throughput. In this paper, the performance of a two-way relay network employing PNC is evaluated with three types of error-correcting codes used at the source and destination nodes, namely low-density parity-check codes, turbo codes and bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding (BICM-ID). All three coding schemes perform similarly in a single user system on the AWGN channel with no relay, but results obtained when employing PNC show that although there is an overall degradation in their performance of all three codes, the LDPC code performance is more seriously affected due to the Sum-Product decoding algorithm being less robust to unreliable symbols broadcast from the relay.

This chapter considers a two‐way relay network, where two terminals A and B desire to exchange information with the help of a relay R. It considers the application of physical‐layer network coding (PLNC) in underwater acoustic systems. With orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing (OFDM) as the underlying modulation scheme, the chapter presents the receiver design at the relay node in the presence of underwater acoustic time‐varying multipath channels. It introduces the system model for the OFDM‐modulated PLNC at the relay node. The chapter derives outage performance bounds of the relay operation in a time‐invariant multipath channel. Performance results based on simulated and emulated data are presented. The data collected in the SPACE08 experiment are used to test the three iterative receivers. The data sets collected in a two‐input multiple‐output (TIMO) experimental setting are adopted to emulate a two‐way relay system. The chapter also demonstrates the block‐error‐rate performance of two decoding schemes.

In linear networks with physical layer network coding (PNC), the relay node performs the combination of the relaying data from both end users. Moreover, the adaptive power allocation (APA) scheme can optimize the transmission rate of PNC for relaying communication systems. However, when the relay nodes are deployed with different distance to both of end user nodes, it is called near-far effect (NFE). The NFE degrades the bit error rate (BER) performance with deteriorating the decoding performance of PNC. Therefore, in order to further optimize the transmission power allocation (PA) for both of end user nodes and relaying node we propose a total adaptive power allocation (TAPA) scheme in this paper. With the proposed TAPA scheme, the NFE of conventional PNC systems can be diminished and the BER performance is improved. Simulation results show that the proposed TAPA improves the BER performance especially for the severe NFE environments.

A noncoherent two-way relaying system is developed using physical-layer network coding for improved throughput over conventional relaying in a fading channel. Energy-efficient noncoherent operation is achieved using multitone frequency shift keying (FSK). A novel soft-output demodulator is developed for the relay, and corresponding achievable exchange rates are found for Rayleigh fading and AWGN channels. Bit-error rate performance approaching the achievable rate is realized using a capacity-approaching channel code and a receiver architecture, which iterates between demodulation and channel decoding. Iterative decoding is performed feeding information back from the channel decoder to the demodulator. In addition, the error-rate performance is made to approach the achievable rate more closely by optimizing LDPC codes for this system. The energy efficiency improvement obtained by increasing the modulation order is more dramatic for the proposed physical-layer network coding scheme than it is for a conventional point-to-point system. Using optimized LDPC codes, the bit-error rate performance is improved by as much as 1.1 dB over a widely known standardized LDPC code, and comes to within 0.7 dB of the limit corresponding to the achievable rate. Throughout this paper, the performance for physical-layer network coding is compared with conventional network coding. When noncoherent FSK is used, physical-layer network coding enables higher achievable rates, and conventional network coding exhibits better energy efficiency at low rates.

This paper addresses the Quality of Service (QoS) degradation problem of wireless relay node failures in multihop Worldwide interoperable Microwave Access (WiMAX) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks. In general, node protection in a communication network increases the reliability of the traffic flow from source to destination. For wireless networks, implementing the traditional 1+1 protection scheme increases the capital cost, as resources cannot be fully utilized. On the other hand, the design and implementation of the 1:N protection scheme in wireless networks for greater value of N (> 2) is very difficult, due to wireless network coverage and the physical layer design. To overcome the above drawbacks, a technique based on network coding is proposed for node protection in multihop wireless networks. In multihop wireless networks, few research efforts are concentrated on node protection schemes using network coding. Moreover, to best of our knowledge, no reports have been published on measuring the QoS performance for node protection in 4G wireless networks using network coding. In this paper, we first describe the node protection scheme using XOR network coding for multihop 4G wireless networks. Then, we measure the QoS performance, such as packet delivery ratio (PDR), latency and jitter, for different scenarios. The scenarios include a failure of a single relay node and failures of two relay nodes with and without our protection scheme and user's mobility. The simulation results show that the QoS performance with protection against a single relay node failure and failures of two relay nodes are very close to that of no failure scenario, while the network reliability increases due to the protection mechanism. Also, we report a decoding problem in multihop wireless networks using XOR network coding.

In this paper, we propose a joint design of MIMO-PNC (multiple-input multiple-output physical layer network coding) and channel decoding in two way relay channels. The paper shows that if we adopt the same Repeat Accumulate (RA) channel code at the two end nodes, there would be a compatible decoder at the relay which can transform the received superimposed packet to the network coding form of the two packets efficiently. Specifically, we redesign the belief propagation decoding algorithm of the RA code for traditional point-to-point channel to suit the need of the MIMO PNC channel. The simulation results show that our new scheme outperforms the previously proposed schemes which combined MIMO NC with channel coding/decoding significantly in terms of BER with little added complexity.

This paper applies the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to address the problem of joint channel estimation and channel decoding in Physical-layer Network Coding (PNC) systems. The use of PNC can significantly improve the throughput of a relay network. The throughput advantage, however, is predicated on the availability of accurate channel estimates. For channel-coded PNC systems, a major challenge is that the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) channel estimation is nontrivial due to 1) the overlapping of signals from multiple users received at the relay; and 2) the correlations among data symbols introduced by channel coding. In this paper, we show that an EM algorithm implemented on a factor graph framework is well suited to tackle this problem. Through iterative message passing, the channel estimation component and the channel decoding component in the factor graph interact to improve each other's results progressively. Simulation results indicate that just one EM iteration of our algorithm can significantly improve the channel estimation accuracy as well as the BER performance of channel-coded PNC systems.

In two-way relay networks (TWRNs) with physical-layer network coding (PNC), introduction of convolutional codes is able to enhance the overall system reliability. In addition, the relay node has to determine a particular broadcast rate for coded packets transmission as the selected rate should be supported on the worst quality links to the intended receivers. Thus, the throughput gain brought by network coding is limited by capacity of the worst link in TWRNs. In this paper, a novel symbol-level rate diverse network coding (RDNC) scheme and reduced-state decoding scheme for convolutional codes are proposed to address the two problems. In this setup, for a given memory length constraint, two source nodes can adopt convolutional codes of different lengths and use reduced-state trellis to reduce decoding complexity. In this work, it is shown that the proposed approach is able to improve system throughput significantly, offer increased reliability, and reduce the complexity of convolutional codes decoding at the same time.

Physical-Layer Network Coding (PNC) employed on a conventional two-way relay communications is an active research area due to the potential doubling of the throughput compared with traditional routing. In this paper, we investigate the effects of impulsive noise added at the relay and sink nodes of a TWRC employing link-by-link coded PNC. The Gaussian mixture model is chosen to model the impulsive noise and the performance of bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding (BICM-ID) and turbo codes on the conventional two-way relay communications is evaluated through simulation results for different mixtures, , of impulsive noise. For high and low values of the turbo codes outperform trellis BICM, but it is shown that for values between = 0.1 and = 0.5, a PNC system with trellis BICM outperforms a comparable PNC system with turbo codes, where both coding schemes have the same block size, code rate and constraint length.

Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output system and physical layer network coding (PNC) are two important technologies that are considered in new generation networks. In this paper we investigate the effect of increasing the number of antenna elements at user nodes and relay node in the presence of PNC. Two-way wireless relay transmission is considered in conjunction with massive number of antennas at the relay node assuming millimeter wave (mmWave) band channel environment. End-to-end transmission is considered using 3-D QUAsi Deterministic RadIo channel GenerAtor (QuaDRiGa) channel model. The performance measures used are the bit error rate (BER) and throughput. Up to 100% increase in throughput of PNC coded system is obtained. The BER performance is improved only when the number of relay node antennas is much higher than that of the user node. Combining mMIMO with PNC gives better throughput without affecting the BER at high SNR. This is achieved with reasonable number of antennas at the user nodes.

Adaptive physical layer network coding (PNC) has been shown to be effective in two-way relay communications (TWRC). Given that the existing PNC methods were developed for frequency-flat fading channels, this paper studies adaptive PNC in OFDM systems operating over frequency-selective fading channels. Proposed and investigated are three methods to determine a common clustering for all subcarriers in order to reduce the overhead information required in the broadcast phase. The "Min-SER" method is given based on the analysis of the error event in the multiple access phase, while the "Max-fade-SER" and "Min-fade-distance" methods are recommended to further reduce the computational complexity in determining the common clustering. Considering the trade-off among performance, overhead and complexity, the "Max-fade-SER" method is the most attractive clustering method for applying adaptive PNC in OFDM systems.

In this paper, we investigate the performance of the so-called Cross Network operating under diverse Network Coding (NC) techniques. We study the impact of Medium Access Control (MAC) layer fairness on the throughput performance of the network for the cases of pure relaying, digital NC with and without overhearing and physical layer NC with and without overhearing. We provide a comparison among these techniques and we discuss the throughput bounds, due to MAC layer limitations, imposed to the system operation by broadly adopted short range communication protocols that provide for fair resource allocation such as IEEE 802.11. Furthermore, we show that significant coding gains are achieved with digital and physical layer NC and we discuss on the energy efficiency performance of each NC case when applied on the Cross Network.