A non-orthogonal multiple-access scheme using reliable physical-layer network coding and cascade-computation decoding

This paper studies non-orthogonal transmission over a K-user fading multiple access channel. We propose a new reliable physical-layer network coding and cascade-computation decoding scheme. In the proposed scheme, K single-antenna users encode their messages by the same practical channel code and QAM modulation, and transmit simultaneously. The receiver chooses K linear coefficient vectors and computes the associated K layers of finite-field linear message combinations in a cascade manner. Finally, the K users' messages are recovered by solving the K linear equations. The proposed can be regarded as a generalized onion peeling. We study the optimal network coding coefficient vectors used in the cascade computation. Numerical results show the performance of the proposed approaches that of the iterative maximum a posteriori probability detection and decoding scheme, but without using receiver iteration. This results in considerable complexity reduction, processing delay, and easier implementation. Our proposed scheme significantly outperforms the iterative detection and decoding scheme with a single iteration, for example, by 1.7 dB for the two user case. The proposed scheme provides a competitive solution for non-orthogonal multiple access.