When Analog Meets Digital: Source-Encoded Physical-Layer Network Coding

Raphaël Naves (1, 2) , Gentian Jakllari (1, 3) , Hicham Khalife (2) , Vania Conan (2) , André-Luc Beylot (1, 3)

1 IRIT-RMESS - Réseaux, Mobiles, Embarqués, Sans fil, Satellites
2 THALES COMMUNICATIONS & SECURITY
3 Toulouse INP - Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse)

We revisit Physical-Layer Network Coding (PLNC) and the reasons preventing it from becoming a staple in wireless networks. We identify its strong coupling to the Two-Way Relay Channel (TWRC) as key among them due to its requiring crossing traffic flows and two-hop node coordination. We introduce SE-PLNC, a Source-Encoded PLNC scheme that is traffic pattern independent and involves coordination only among one-hop neighbors, making it significantly more practical to adopt PLNC in multi-hop wireless networks. To accomplish this, SE-PLNC introduces three innovations: it combines bit-level with physical-level network coding, it shifts most of the coding burden from the relay to the source of the PLNC scheme, and it leverages multi-path relaying opportunities available to a particular traffic flow. We evaluate SE-PLNC using theoretical analysis, proof-of-concept implementation on a Universal Software Radio Peripherals (USRP) testbed, and simulations. The theoretical analysis shows the scalability of SE-PLNC and its efficiency in large ad-hoc networks while the testbed experiments its real-life feasibility. Large-scale simulations show that TWRC PLNC barely boosts network throughput while SE-PLNC improves it by over 30%.

Domaines: Informatique [cs]

Raphaël Naves, Gentian Jakllari, Hicham Khalife, Vania Conan, André-Luc Beylot. When Analog Meets Digital: Source-Encoded Physical-Layer Network Coding. IEEE 19th International Symposium on "A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks" (WoWMoM 2018), Jun 2018, Chania, Greece. pp.1--9, ⟨10.1109/WoWMoM.2018.8449810⟩. ⟨hal-03023412⟩