BER performance analysis of MIMO Physical-layer Network Coding based on VBLAST detection

MIMO techniques can significantly improve the diversity gain and spectrum utilization. Physical-layer Network Coding (PNC) is also a new technique to increase the spectrum utilization of wireless networks. The novel VBLAST PNC scheme combined these two techniques to improve the performance further. In this paper, we analyze the Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of the new scheme based on QPSK modulation over Rayleigh fading channels. Although the adaptive VBLAST PNC in the new scheme has a better BER performance, the analysis of this algorithm is too difficult to derive the closed-form expressions. Hence, we just present the exact analytical BER performance of VBLAST PNC in a near closed-form. The BER analysis is then verified by the numerical simulation. Inheriting the basic idea from VBLAST PNC scheme and with the help of analytical BER performance, we may develop a better PNC decoding strategy in further works.