Synchronization analysis of physical-layer network coding in LTE system

Physical layer network coding (PNC) has recently attracted attention in wireless relay system. With PNC, the destructive effect of interference in wireless networks can be eliminated and the capacity of networks can be boosted significantly. However, synchronization is always considered as an outstanding issue which causes performance penalty on PNC. In [7], the impact of imperfect synchronization is investigated, however the analysis only considers the time domain signal processing, and it does not target at any specific practical system. In this paper, we investigate the synchronization issues on PNC in the most flourishing wireless network, long term evolution (LTE) system, considering the orthogonal frequency division modulation (OFDM) characteristics, the channel model, the transmission scheme and the adopted synchronization mechanism in LTE.