Active Physical-Layer Network Coding for Cooperative Two-Way Relay Channels

For wireless networks, traditional multihop routing, digital network coding (DNC) and physical-layer network coding (PNC) do not make full use of nonorthogonal signal subspace. We develop an active physical-layer network coding (APNC) strategy, introducing bi-directional interference to both destinations in a cooperative two-way relay channel (CTRC), which works on symbol level and uses arbitrary level of overhearing ability to increase the system overall performance. A diversity and multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) study is conducted. The result shows APNC is more general and flexible with great DMT improvement compared to state-of-the-art transmission strategies.