Multiple-access relay channel with direct network coding

This paper investigates direct network coding (DNC) scheme for multiple-access relay channel (MARC), which consists of two source nodes, one relay node and one destination node. All of them work in half-duplex mode with single antenna. We develop mutual information equation and achievable rate calculation for the DNC scheme over the Rayleigh fading channels and further offer a theoretical analysis for the signal aggregation at a relay node and signal extraction at a destination node. The simulation results are present to illustrate sum-rate, outage probability and system throughput for the different schemes, such as analog network coding (ANC) scheme, amplify-and-forward (AF) scheme, decode-and-forward relay cooperative scheme (DF).