Lattice Coding for the Two-way Two-relay Channel

Lattice coding techniques may be used to derive achievable rate regions which outperform known independent, identically distributed (i.i.d.) random codes in multi-source relay networks and in particular the two-way relay channel. Gains stem from the ability to decode the sum of codewords (or messages) using lattice codes at higher rates than possible with i.i.d. random codes. Here we develop a novel lattice coding scheme for the Two-way Two-relay Channel: 1 <-> 2 <-> 3 <-> 4, where Node 1 and 4 simultaneously communicate with each other through two relay nodes 2 and 3. Each node only communicates with its neighboring nodes. The key technical contribution is the lattice-based achievability strategy, where each relay is able to remove the noise while decoding the sum of several signals in a Block Markov strategy and then re-encode the signal into another lattice codeword using the so-called "Re-distribution Transform". This allows nodes further down the line to again decode sums of lattice codewords. This transform is central to improving the achievable rates, and ensures that the messages traveling in each of the two directions fully utilize the relay's power, even under asymmetric channel conditions. All decoders are lattice decoders and only a single nested lattice codebook pair is needed. The symmetric rate achieved by the proposed lattice coding scheme is within 0.5 log 3 bit/Hz/s of the symmetric rate capacity.
Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory on December 3, 2012