Linear physical-layer network coding for fifth generation radio access networks

In fourth generation mobile radio systems such as LTE-Advanced the concept of cooperative multipoint (CoMP), sometimes also known as network MIMO, was already established in order to minimize the effect of intercell interference, especially on cell-edge users. In principle network MIMO eliminates intercell interference by serving each user from a combination of neighbouring base stations. One major disadvantage of this is that it tends to greatly increase the backhaul load, since on the downlink user data needs to be sent to multiple base stations, and on the uplink sampled signals from each base station need to be sent at high precision to some combining point.