Transmission Protocol Design for Binary Physical Network Coded Multi-Way Relay Networks

This paper considers a multi-way relay network in which multiple users intend to achieve full information exchange with one another with the aid of a single relay. A general method for designing the transmission protocol with binary physical- layer network coding (PNC) is developed based on a tree representation. Different transmission schemes are analytically and numerically examined in terms of the decoding strategy, throughput performance, and energy consumption. It is shown that distributing the load of transmissions unevenly among users may achieve a better network throughput performance although some users will consume remarkably more energy than others. A systematic approach to designing the transmission scheme such that minimum error probability is achieved while some specified energy constraint is satisfied is also proposed.