Differential modulation for two-way wireless communications: a perspective of differential network coding at the physical layer

This work considers two-way relay channels (TWRC), where two terminals transmit simultaneously to each other with the help of a relay node. For single antenna systems, we propose several new transmission schemes for both amplify-and-forward (AF) protocol and decode-and-forward (DF) protocol where the channel state information is not required. These new schemes are the counterpart of the traditional noncoherent detection or differential detection in point-to-point communications. Differential modulation design for TWRC is challenging because the received signal is a mixture of the signals from both source terminals. We derive maximum likelihood (ML) detectors for both AF and DF protocols, where the latter can be considered as performing differential network coding at the physical layer. As the exact ML detector is prohibitively complex, we propose several suboptimal alternatives including decision feedback detectors and prediction-based detectors. All these strategies work well as evidenced by the simulation results. The proposed protocols are especially useful when the required average data rate is high. In addition, we extend the protocols to the multiple-antenna case and provide the design criterion of the differential unitary space time modulation (DUSTM) for TWRC

Self-concatenated code design and its application in power-efficient cooperative communications

In this tutorial, we have focused on the design of binary self-concatenated coding schemes with the help of EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts and Union bound analysis. The design methodology of future iteratively decoded self-concatenated aided cooperative communication schemes is presented. In doing so, we will identify the most important milestones in the area of channel coding, concatenated coding schemes and cooperative communication systems till date and suggest future research directions

A universal space-time architecture for multiple-antenna aided systems

In this tutorial, we first review the family of conventional multiple-antenna techniques, and then we provide a general overview of the recent concept of the powerful Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) family based on a universal Space-Time Shift Keying (STSK) philosophy. When appropriately configured, the proposed STSK scheme has the potential of outperforming conventional MIMO arrangements

Source and Physical-Layer Network Coding for Correlated Two-Way Relaying

In this paper, we study a half-duplex two-way relay channel (TWRC) with correlated sources exchanging bidirectional information. In the case, when both sources have the knowledge of correlation statistics, a source compression with physical-layer network coding (SCPNC) scheme is proposed to perform the distributed compression at each source node. When only the relay has the knowledge of correlation statistics, we propose a relay compression with physical-layer network coding (RCPNC) scheme to compress the bidirectional messages at the relay. The closed-form block error rate (BLER) expressions of both schemes are derived and verified through simulations. It is shown that the proposed schemes achieve considerable improvements in both error performance and throughput compared with the conventional non-compression scheme in correlated two-way relay networks (CTWRNs).Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures. IET Communications, 201