Combined MRC-like reception and transmit diversity for physical-layer network coding with multiple-antenna relay

A novel spatial diversity scheme is proposed for physical-layer network coding (PNC) aided two-way relay network with a multiple-antenna relay node. Distinct from the traditional virtual-MIMO based MIMO-NC/PNC schemes, a novel PNC-specific maximal-ratio-combining like (MRC-L) scheme is designed to achieve receive diversity in the multiple-access (MA) phase, and the space-time coding (STC) is adopted to achieve transmit diversity in the broadcast (BC) phase. Both analysis and simulation results prove that the proposed scheme achieves an end-to-end diversity gain and greatly outperforms the virtual-MIMO based MIMO-NC/PNC schemes and the SISO-PNC scheme in fading channel.