A two‐way relay framework based on interference cancellation in wireless networks

The two‐way relay (TWR) protocols are efficient in providing appreciable throughput gains in wireless networks through the use of network coding to combine packets from multiple channels. The key determinant factor in driving the throughput improvement is the degree of simultaneity achieved in the relay scheme. In this paper, we propose a new TWR protocol named interference cancellation TWR (IC‐TWR), which combines network coding, spatial diversity, and IC techniques to arrive at high degree of simultaneity and in the meanwhile to relax the requirement on channel state information as compared with TWR schemes based on amplify‐and‐forward. Numerical analysis shows that the proposed IC‐TWR is uniformly advantageous over the traditional decode‐and‐forward scheme in terms of system throughput and end‐to‐end delay. The proposed scheme may be useful for system designers of high‐speed multimedia applications in wireless mobile networks, wireless cellular networks, wireless sensor networks, and so on. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Opportunistic source scheduling in multi‐source two‐way relay networks

We consider a multi‐source two‐way relay network, in which one source communicates with N other sources (n = 1,2,…,N) with the help of a single amplify‐and‐forward relay. We propose two opportunistic source scheduling schemes in such a network. According to the proposed schemes, in each transmission interval, only a single out of the N sources is selected, and this selected node acts as either transmitter or receiver depending on the channel conditions. For both schemes, tight closed‐form lower bounds of outage probability and bit error rate (BER) are derived. Asymptotic outage probability and BER that are valid for high signal‐to‐noise ratio regime are also analyzed, which can provide important insights on the impact of system parameters. The analytical results show that the full diversity order N + 1 can be achieved by both proposed schemes. Simulation results are also presented to corroborate the analysis. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

BER‐modified regenerative protocols for OFDM‐based two‐way wireless relay channel

It is well known that symbol‐level regenerative relay protocols suffer the error propagation problem because receiver decodes blindly and overlooks the probability of relay forwarding wrong bits. In a two‐way relay networks, the problem still exists in both network coding (decode‐and‐forward) and physical network coding (denoise‐and‐forward) protocols. For today's widely adopted wide band Orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, error propagation will dramatically restrict the system's end‐to‐end performance especially when frequency selective fading exists. In this paper, we propose a bit error rate (BER) modified decoding algorithm for these OFDM‐based two‐way symbol‐level regenerative relay strategies. By confining the confidence level of demodulated soft information according to the likelihood of relay having made an error on each bit, this proposed algorithm significantly boosts the end‐to‐end BER performance of the system. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Combined orthogonal physical‐layer network coding over fading two‐way relay channels

This paper proposes a new physical‐layer network coding (PNC) scheme, named combined orthogonal PNC (COPNC), for fading two‐way relay channels. The scheme is based on orthogonal PNC (OPNC). In the scheme, the two source nodes employ orthogonal carriers, and the relay node makes an orthogonal combining of the two information bits rather than exclusive or (XOR), which is employed in most PNC schemes. The paper also analyzes the bit error rate (BER) performance of PNC, OPNC, and COPNC for Rayleigh fading model. Simulation results for Rayleigh and Nakagami‐m fading channels show that COPNC can provide outstanding BER performance compared with PNC and OPNC, especially when the uplink channel conditions are asymmetric. The results in Nakagami‐m channels also imply that COPNC will provide higher BER gain with more severe fading depth. Potential works about COPNC are also presented in this paper. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Differential space–time network coding in MIMO two‐way relay channel network

This paper focuses on noncoherent detection scheme for multiple‐input multiple‐output two‐way relay channel network with two two‐antennas source nodes and one single‐antenna relay node. An orthogonal differential space–time network coding (ODSTNC) scheme based on relay detection and forward protocol is proposed. The proposed scheme combines space–time coding with network coding, and the differential modulation and detection are used in both multiple access stage and broadcast stage. The multiple‐symbol differential detection is employed at the relay. The maximum likelihood decision and its low‐complexity sphere decoding decision are given. The upper and lower bounds on the average symbol error probability for this system under differential binary phase shift keying (DBPSK) are derived, and a diversity order of 2 is confirmed to be achieved. The simulation results show that the ODSTNC scheme has good performance, and it is available for the applications of far distance signal transmission between two terminals where channel state information is unknown. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nth best relay selection with network coding in two‐way relay systems

In this paper, we propose an Nth best relay selection (Nth‐RS) scheme for analog network coding in two‐way relay systems. In traditional two‐way single‐relay selection schemes, only the best one is selected to forward network‐coded signals. However, in practical applications, the best relay may be unavailable because of the scheduling or overload constraints. In this case, we investigate a more general scheme, where the Nth best but available relay is selected. To evaluate the transmission of reliability, the expression of outage probability in exponential–integral form and its asymptotic expression in closed form are presented. Moreover, the upper bound and lower bound of outage probability are also derived. The analysis reveals that the diversity order of Nth‐RS equals to (M ? N + 1), where M is the number of relay nodes, and the results are verified by simulations. In order to improve system performance, transmit power between sources and relay is optimally allocated to minimize the upper bound of outage probability under total power constraint. Simulation results show that Nth‐RS scheme with proposed power allocation can achieve substantial improvement over equal power allocation scheme. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimal resource allocation for multiple network‐coded two‐way relay in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems

This paper studies optimal resource allocation for multiple network‐coded two‐way relay in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems. All the two‐way relay nodes adopt amplify‐and‐forward and operate with analog network coding protocol. A joint optimization problem considering power allocation, relay selection, and subcarrier pairing to maximize the sum capacity under individual power constraints at each transmitter or total network power constraint is first formulated. By applying dual method, we provide a unified optimization framework to solve this problem. With this framework, we further propose three low‐complexity suboptimal algorithms. The complexity of the proposed optimal resource allocation (ORA) algorithm and three suboptimal algorithms are analyzed, and it is shown that the complexity of ORA is only a polynomial function of the number of subcarriers and relay nodes under both individual and total power constraints. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ORA scheme yields substantial performance improvement over a baseline scheme, and suboptimal algorithms can achieve a trade‐off between performance and complexity. The results also indicate that with the same total network transmit power, the performance of ORA under total power constraint can outperform that under individual power constraints. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Joint sensing and transmission for cognitive amplify‐and‐forward two‐way relay networks

In this paper, we propose a cognitive transmission scheme for Amplify‐and‐Forward (AF) two‐way relay networks (TWRNs) and investigate its joint sensing and transmission performance. Specifically, we derive the overall false alarm probability, the overall detection probability, the outage probability of the cognitive TWRN over Rayleigh fading channels. Furthermore, based on these probabilities, the spectrum hole utilization efficiency of the cognitive TWRN is defined and evaluated. It is shown that smaller individual or overall false alarm probability can result in less outage probability and thus larger spectrum hole utilization efficiency for cognitive TWRN, and however produce more interference to the primary users. Interestingly, it is found that given data rate, more transmission power for the cognitive TWRN does not necessarily obtain higher spectrum hole utilization efficiency. Moreover, our results show that a maximum spectrum hole utilization efficiency can be achieved through an optimal allocation of the time slots between the spectrum sensing and data transmission phases. Finally, simulation results are provided to corroborate our proposed studies. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the performance of two‐way relay channels using space–time codes

In this paper, we explore the advantages of network coding and space–time coding in improving the performance of two‐way‐relayed communications where two terminals absent of direct links exchange information through a single relay in between. Network coding allows embracing the interference from other terminals thereby turning it into a capacity boost. The application of space–time codes yields higher capacity by exploiting the spatial diversity. The joint performance of both techniques is studied in this paper. Specifically, we consider the class of decode‐and‐forward (DF) relaying strategy, evaluated in terms of symbol error rate using BPSK and QPSK modulations by both theoretical analysis and simulation. Based on our results, DF outperforms the amplify‐and‐decode and partial‐decode‐and‐forward protocols. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Analysis of spectrally efficient two‐way relay assisted free space optical systems in atmospheric turbulence with path loss

In this paper, we investigate the performance of two‐way relay assisted free space optical systems over atmospheric turbulence‐induced fading channels affected by molecular absorbtion‐induced path losses. A three node, dual‐hop, bi‐directional, half‐duplex relaying system with independent but not necessarily identically distributed channels is considered. Spectral efficiency is achieved by employing network coding to complete data transmission in two‐time phases. Closed form expression for system outage performance is derived considering decode‐and‐forward protocol. Additionally, the error performance in terms of average symbol error rate for M‐ary phase shift keying is evaluated. Further, the net achievable capacity of the system is also calculated. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Power allocation and relay selection for AF two‐path successive relaying networks

Two‐path or successive relaying, which aims to establish two relay links transmitting different information symbols in adjacent time slots, has recently emerged as an attractive wireless communication protocol to improve the spectral efficiency in half‐duplex cooperative systems. In this paper, we investigate power allocation and relay selection techniques for amplify‐and‐forward two‐path successive relaying networks. Our approach is based on the maximization of the received SNR subject to a total power budget consumed by the source and the relay assisting this specific transmission. Two scenarios including with and without direct link are considered here. We show that the main problem has a closed‐form solution and only requires a few amounts of feedback bits to be broadcasted. Numerical results reveal that the proposed approaches are more insensitive to the inter‐relay interference and robust to channel estimation errors; meanwhile, they perform better than the existing schemes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Differential modulation for asynchronous two‐way relay systems over frequency‐selective fading channels

We propose two schemes for asynchronous multi‐relay two‐way relay (MR‐TWR) systems in which neither the users nor the relays know the channel state information. In an MR‐TWR system, two users exchange their messages with the help of N_R relays. Most of the existing works on MR‐TWR systems based on differential modulation assume perfect symbol‐level synchronization between all communicating nodes. However, this assumption is not valid in many practical systems, which makes the design of differentially modulated schemes more challenging. Therefore, we design differential modulation schemes that can tolerate timing misalignment under frequency‐selective fading. We investigate the performance of the proposed schemes in terms of either probability of bit error or pairwise error probability. Through numerical examples, we show that the proposed schemes outperform existing competing solutions in the literature, especially for high signal‐to‐noise ratio values. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Achievable sum‐rate maximization using relay/antenna selection for MIMO two‐way AF relaying with channel uncertainties

This paper focuses on the layered relay‐and‐antenna selection (LRAS) for achievable sum‐rate (ASR) maximization while considering the impacts of residual self‐interference due to channel estimation errors in multiple‐input multiple‐output two‐way amplify‐and‐forward relaying systems. Two LRAS algorithms, namely, the Gram–Schmidt and the adaptive discrete stochastic approximation selection techniques, are investigated based on the ASR maximization under an equal power allocation. To alleviate the complexity burden of the LRAS strategies, the optimal relay and the subset of transmit‐and‐receive antenna pairs are determined by a two‐stage selection mechanism. By taking two LRAS strategies and correlated channel uncertainties into account, the development of a two‐way multiple‐input multiple‐output multi‐amplify‐and‐forward‐relay system is able to provide improved robustness against the channel state information mismatch and the residual self‐interference. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Achievable rate region with secrecy constraints for secure communication in two‐way relay networks

In this paper, we consider a two‐way relay network consisted of two sources and multiple relays in the presence of an eavesdropper, where the cooperative beamforming strategy is applied to exploit the cooperative diversity to support the secure communication as illustrated in Figure 1. Naturally, we are interested in the beamforming strategy and power allocation to maximize the achievable sum secrecy rate. However, the corresponding problem is equivalent to solve a product of three correlated generalized Rayleigh quotients problem and difficult to solve in general. Because of the openness of wireless medium, the information rate leakage to the eavesdropper cannot be canceled perfectly. To some extent, ‘almost perfect secrecy’, where the rate leakage to the eavesdropper is limited, is more interesting from the practical point of view. In this case, we concern ourself mainly the achievable rate region for general case where the rate at the eavesdropper is regarded as the measurement of secrecy level. Two beamforming approaches, optimal beamforming and null space beamforming, are applied to investigate the achievable rate region with total power constraint and the rate constraint at the eavesdropper, which can be obtained by solving a sequence of the weighted sum inverse‐signal‐to‐noise‐ratio minimization (WSISM) problem. Because of the non‐convexity of WSISM problem, an alternating iteration algorithm is proposed to optimize the relay beamforming vector and two sources' transmit power, where two subproblems need to be solved in each iteration. Meanwhile, we provide the convergence analysis of proposed algorithm. Through the numerical simulations, we verify the effectiveness of proposed algorithm. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multiuser two‐way relay processing and power control methods for cognitive radio networks

We consider a cognitive radio system where a secondary network shares the spectrum band with a primary network. Aiming at improving the frequency efficiency of the secondary network, we set a multiantenna relay station in the secondary network to perform two‐way relaying. Three linear processing schemes at the relay station based on zero forcing, zero forcing‐maximum ratio transmission, and minimum mean square error criteria are derived to guarantee the quality of service of primary users and to suppress the intrapair and interpair interference among secondary users (SUs). In addition, the transmit power of SUs is optimized to maximize the sum rate of SUs and to limit the interference brought to PUs. Numerical results show that the proposed multiuser two‐way relay processing schemes and the optimal power control policies can efficiently limit the interference caused by the secondary network to primary users, and the sum rate of SUs can also be greatly improved. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Protocol design and data detection for two‐way relay networks with fractional asynchronous delays

In wireless two‐way relay systems, it is difficult to achieve perfect timing synchronization among different nodes. In this paper, we investigate relaying protocol design and data detect schemes for asynchronous two‐way relaying systems to combat the intersymbol interference caused by asynchronous transmission. We consider fractional asynchronous delays and two schemes are proposed based on cyclic prefixed single carrier block transmission, namely, the receiver frequency domain equalization scheme and relay synchronization and network coding (RSNC) scheme. In the receiver frequency domain equalization scheme, the relay simply amplifies the received signal and forwards to the two source nodes, and fractionally spaced frequency domain equalizer (FS‐FDE) is employed at the receiver to recover the transmit data. In the RSNC scheme, the asynchronous signals are resynchronized with an FS‐FDE at the relay node. The output signals of FS‐FDE are then demodulated and network coded before forwarding to the two source nodes. In this RSNC scheme, data detection at the source nodes is the same as that in synchronous networks because the asynchronous signals have already been synchronized at the relay node. Simulation results show that the performance of both schemes is almost the same as in the perfect synchronized two‐way relaying systems. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tree‐based channel assignment schemes for multi‐channel wireless sensor networks

Many sensor node platforms used for establishing wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can support multiple radio channels for wireless communication. Therefore, rather than using a single radio channel for whole network, multiple channels can be utilized in a sensor network simultaneously to decrease overall network interference, which may help increase the aggregate network throughput and decrease packet collisions and delays. This method, however, requires appropriate schemes to be used for assigning channels to nodes for multi‐channel communication in the network. Because data generated by sensor nodes are usually delivered to the sink node using routing trees, a tree‐based channel assignment scheme is a natural approach for assigning channels in a WSN. We present two fast tree‐based channel assignment schemes (called bottom up channel assignment and neighbor count‐based channel assignment) for multi‐channel WSNs. We also propose a new interference metric that is used by our algorithms in making decisions. We validated and evaluated our proposed schemes via extensive simulation experiments. Our simulation results show that our algorithms can decrease interference in a network, thereby increasing performance, and that our algorithms are good alternatives for static channel assignment in WSNs. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the performance of multi‐hop wireless relay networks

User cooperation has evolved as a popular coding technique in wireless relay networks (WRNs). Using the neighboring nodes as relays to establish a communication between a source and a destination achieves an increase of the diversity order. The relay nodes can be seen as a distributed multi‐antenna system, which can be exploited for transmit diversity by using distributed space–time block coding (STBC). In this paper, we investigate the bit error rate (BER) of multi‐hop WRNs employing distributed STBC at the relay nodes. We develop the general model of WRNs using distributed STBC, and we derive the pairwise error probability and an approximation of the BER. We examine the impact of several parameters, such as distributed STBC at the relays, the number of relays, the distances between the nodes, and the channel state information available at the receivers, on the BER performance of the multi‐hop WRN. The obtained results provide guidelines about the expected error performance and the design of channel estimation for these networks. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exact capacity analysis of multi‐relay multiuser cooperative networks based on two‐step selection

This paper advocates the capacity analysis of an amplify‐and‐forward cooperative communication system model in multi‐relay multiuser networks. A two‐step selection scheme is adopted, and both relay and user selection are based on the outdated channel state information. Exact expression of channel capacity for independent, but not necessarily identically distributed, Rayleigh fading channels is derived. Finally, simulations are carried out to verify the correctness of theoretical analysis and illustrate the effect of parameters on the performance. Results show that although the performance of our scheme is inferior to the optimal joint selection scheme, it is still a practical scheme because its complexity is much lower than that of the optimal scheme. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.