A Unified Treatment of Superposition Coding Aided Communications: Theory and Practice

In this tutorial, a unified treatment of the topic of SuperPosition Coding (SPC) aided communications systems is offered, where we focus our attention not only on the theoretical background of SPC but also on its implementation techniques. The design methodology of SPC aided communications transceivers is described, including the Multiple Level Modulation (MLM) concept, the corresponding iterative Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) aided receiver and the quasi-random coding principle. Building on these fundamental discussions, various future wireless applications of the SPC technique were provided, which encompass cooperative communications-assisted relay systems and cross-layer SPC aided multiplexed Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) techniques. Our discussions demonstrate that the SPC technique is a promising enabler for diverse future wireless communications scenarios, ranging from cellular networks to cooperative networks.