Fading Two-Way Relay Channels: Physical-Layer Versus Digital Network Coding

In this paper, we consider three transmit strategies for the fading three-node, two-way relay network (TWRN) -- physical-layer network coding (PNC), digital network coding (DNC) and codeword superposition (CW-Sup). The aim is to minimize the total average energy needed to deliver a given pair of required average rates. Full channel state information is assumed to be available at all transmitters and receivers. The optimization problems corresponding to the various strategies in fading channels are formulated, solved and compared. For the DNC-based strategies, a simple time sharing of transmission of the network-coded message and the remaining bits of the larger message (DNC-TS) is considered first. We extend this approach to include a superposition strategy (DNC-Sup), in which the network-coded message and the remainder of the longer source message are superimposed before transmission. It is demonstrated theoretically that DNC-Sup outperforms DNC-TS and CW-Sup in terms of total average energy usage. More importantly, it is shown in simulation that DNC-Sup performs better than PNC if the required rate is low and worse otherwise. Finally, an algorithm to select the optimal strategy in terms of energy usage subject to different rate pair requirements is presented.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure

Digital Network Coding Aided Two-way Relaying: Energy Minimization and Queue Analysis

In this paper, we consider a three node, two-way relay system with digital network coding over static channels where all link gains are assumed to be constant during transmission. The aim is to minimize total energy consumption while ensuring queue stability at all nodes, for a given pair of random packet arrival rates. Specifically, we allow for a set of transmission modes and solve for the optimal fraction of resources allocated to each mode, including multiaccess uplink transmission mode and network coding broadcasting mode. In addition, for the downlink, we find the condition to determine whether superposition coding with excess data over the better link and network coded data for both users is energy efficient and the corresponding optimization is formulated and solved. To tackle the queue evolution in this network, we present a detailed analysis of the queues at each node using a random scheduling method that closely approximates the theoretical design, through a two-dimensional Markov chain model