Performance of physical layer network coding in a frequency-selective fading channel

Wireless communications are characterized by a multipath propagation that is suitable for application of network coding (NC) to improve the network performance. In particular, a physical layer network coding (PNC) is a promising technique to further improve network capacity for bi-directional information exchange between pairs of end users assisted by a relay terminal. In this paper, we present the performance of bi-directional transmission with PNC in a multipath channel. We introduce the use of frequency domain equalization (FDE) with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and single carrier (SC) transmission to cope with the channel distortion. The equalization weights based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) criteria required for SC-FDE signaling are derived.