Physical layer Network Coding for the K-user Multiple Access Relay Channel

A Physical layer Network Coding (PNC) scheme is proposed for the K-user wireless Multiple Access Relay Channel (MARC), in which K source nodes transmit their messages to the destination node D with the help of a relay node R. The proposed PNC scheme involves two transmission phases: (i) Phase 1 during which the source nodes transmit, the relay node and the destination node receive and (ii) Phase 2 during which the source nodes and the relay node transmit, and the destination node receives. At the end of Phase 1, the relay node decodes the messages of the source nodes and during Phase 2 transmits a many-to-one function of the decoded messages. Wireless networks in which the relay node decodes, suffer from loss of diversity order if the decoder at the destination is not chosen properly. A novel decoder is proposed for the PNC scheme, which offers the maximum possible diversity order of 2, for a proper choice of certain parameters and the network coding map. Specifically, the network coding map used at the relay is chosen to be a K-dimensional Latin Hypercube, in order to ensure the maximum diversity order of 2. Also, it is shown that the proposed decoder can be implemented by a fast decoding algorithm. Simulation results presented for the 3-user MARC show that the proposed scheme offers a large gain over the existing scheme for the K-user MARC.