A novel design of physical layer network coding in strong asymmetric two-way relay channels

Abstract

The quality of two-way links is always asymmetric in practical two-way relay channels (TWRC) and therefore, the capacity of TWRC will be limited by the weaker link. An asymmetric modulation scheme, with physical layer network coding, was presented in order to improve the transmission reliability in TWRC. This makes full use of the stronger link to improve the overall transmission rate and also ensures the reliability of the weaker link. The simulation results show that the proposed asymmetric modulation scheme in the case of strongly asymmetric channels, compared to the symmetric transmission, enhances the system capacity significantly and also guarantees the system reliability. © 2013 Wei et al.; licensee Springer.