IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO.

8, AUGUST 2010

689

Modified High-Order PAMs for

Binary Coded Physical-Layer Network Coding
Hyun Jong Yang, Youngchol Choi, and Joohwan Chun
AbstractThe non-binary code (NBC) or the lattice code (LC)
has been the only possible channel code with the pulse amplitude
modulation (PAM) signaling of modulation size greater than two
for the physical layer network coding (PNC) over a decode-andforward (DF) relaying channel. A major drawback with the NBC
or LC however is its high computational complexity. In this letter,
we present new modified high-order PAMs that enable us to use
the computationally efficient binary channel coding under the PNC
over a DF relaying channel.
Index TermsPhysical-layer network coding (PNC), binary
channel code, pulse amplitude modulation (PAM).

I. I NTRODUCTION

HE physical-layer network coding (PNC) is known to

improve the spectral efficiency of two-way relaying channels [1], [2]. Between the two relaying techniques: amplifyand-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF), the DF relaying needs 5 dB lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) than the
AF relaying for the same achievable rate under the additive
white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with a symmetric SNR
[3]. We shall only consider the DF relaying. Consider the
three-node two-way relay channel shown in Fig. 1. The nodes
N1 and N2 exchange information while the relay node N3
decodes and forwards information between them. We assume
that all communication channels are AWGN channels with
the same SNR. At node N, where = 1, 2, 3, the information
bits are denoted by w and the corresponding codeword with
alphabet cardinality , by c . In addition, let the scalar be
a pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) signal with modulation
size at the th symbol time slot, and the vector c be the
corresponding consecutive coded symbols of length log .
Now the conventional PNC over a relay channel [1], [2]
operates as follows. At stage 1, N1 and N2 simultaneously
transmit 1 and 2 , respectively, and N3 receives the signal
3 ,
(1)
3 = 1 + 2 + ,

where denotes the AWGN at N3. If c is a binary codeword

i.e., = 2 and is modulated with binary phase shift keying
(BPSK) i.e., = 2, then N3 decodes c3 c1 c2 from a
sequence of 3 to remove noise , and reconstructs XORed
information bits w3 , where w3 w1 w2 . Although there
can be a different denoising strategy as considered in [4], we
only deal with the XOR network coding which is simple and
suitable for binary channel coding. At stage 2, N3 broadcasts
Manuscript received January 29, 2010. The associate editor coordinating
the review of this letter and approving it for publication was M. Ardakani.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Korea
Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea (e-mail:
hjyang@sclab.kaist.ac.kr). Y. Choi is also with the Korea Ocean Research &
Development Institute.
Y. Choi was supported by the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime
Affairs of Korea under Grant 20043001.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2010.08.100166

Stage 1
Stage 2

s2

s1
N1
Fig. 1.

s3

N3

s3

N2

PNC over a two-way relay channel.

the sequence of 3 , which is a re-encoded and modulated

signal from the reconstructed w3 , to N1 and N2. Then N1 and
N2 retrieve w3 , and get w2 and w1 , respectively, by taking
the XOR on w3 with w ( = 1, 2) they sent at stage 1.
For a higher order -PAM, where > 2, the above
conventional PNC will work properly by decoding and retransmitting c3 = [c1 + c2 ] [5], [6] at N3, where [] is the
modulo- operation, only if = ; i.e., the codeword c is a
non-binary code (NBC) or a lattice code (LC) with an alphabet
cardinality . However, if c is a binary codeword, i.e., = 2,
then c3 = [c1 + c2 ] will not be a codeword and therefore
cannot be decoded. A major drawback of using NBC or LC for
-PAM, however, is the high computational complexity: NBC
needs ( log ) decoding complexity [7] while LC is not
practical because LC needs the -dimensional sphere packing
and hypersphere region-shaping, for which analytic solutions
are not known [8], and the maximum-likelihood decoding of
LC is known to be NP-hard.
A. The Ambiguity Problem
For the -PAM signaling with > 2, a computationally
attractive PNC approach would be to decode and retransmit
c3 = [c1 + c2 ]2 = c1 c2 at N3, using binary codes for
c , as with the bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM).
Unfortunately however, this approach with the conventional
signaling does not work because it gives ambiguous detection
of c3 as can be seen below.
Consider the relation defined as
: 1 + 2  c3 ,

c3 c1 c2 .

(2)

For the ambiguity-free detection of c3 from a sequence of

1 + 2 , should be a function, i.e., each value under must
be uniquely determined, which is easily seen to be true for
BPSK [1], [9]. However, when the modulation size becomes
higher, cannot be a function with the conventional uniform
constellation. In Table I as an example, the values, -10, -6, -4
and -2 of 1 + 2 are mapped to two or more c3 values.
We shall propose a new non-uniform -PAM constellation
suitable for the binary code based PNC that does not cause
the aforementioned ambiguity when c3 is detected at N3. We
design the modulators of N1 and N2 and the demodulator of
N3 only for stage 1, because the modulators and demodulators
at stage 2 may be based on any conventional (uniform) PAM.

c 2010 IEEE
1089-7798/10$25.00

690

IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO. 8, AUGUST 2010

TABLE I
R ELATION BETWEEN 1 + 2 AND c3 FOR THE CONVENTIONAL UNIFORM
8-PAM OF {0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 } = {7, 5, 3, 1, 1, 3, 5, 7},
WHERE DENOTE CONSTELLATION POINTS

s1l , s2l
c1l , c2l

a0

a1

a2

( s1 , s2 )

s1l + s2l

a3

a4

a5

( s2 , s1 )
l

a6

(a0 , a2 ) (a1 , a1 )

a0

a7

c3l = c1l c2l

(a0 , a0 )
(a0 , a1 )

Should not be
disturbed

(a0 , a3 ) (a1 , a2 )

a1

a2

a3

a4

(a0 , a7 )

(a1 , a6 )

(a2 , a5 )

a7

THE DISTANCE OF ADJACENT SUM LEVELS

Unsorted

(a1 , a5 )

a6

TABLE II
U NSORTED AND SORTED 27 SUM LEVELS , WHERE DASL STANDS FOR
s1 + s2 0
l

2 +

..... 3 + +

2 +

.....

< <

(a0 , a5 ) (a1 , a4 ) (a2 , a3 )

(a2 , a4 )

a5

Fig. 2. Constraints imposed on the 8-PAM constellation to minimize the

number of sum levels (NSL).

(a0 , a4 ) (a1 , a3 ) (a2 , a2 )

(a0 , a6 )

(a3 , a3 )
(a3 , a4 )

Noting that 2 -QAM can be realized with two -PAMs, we

shall only consider the -PAM in this letter.
II. P ROPOSED NON - UNIFORM -PAM FOR PNC
We propose a three-step design procedure to find the
optimal -PAM constellation points and the corresponding
bit-mapping for N1 and N2, which are free from the detection
ambiguity, and maximize the achievable rate. For illustrative purposes, we shall consider the 8-PAM ignoring power
normalization. However, the same design procedure can be
applied to other modulation orders as well.
A. Step 1: Finding the initial bit-mapping
Let us fix the bit-mapping (between constellation points and
3-bit tuples) as in Table I and consider only the levels of
1 +2 . We start with the conventional uniform 8-PAM having
constellation points {7, 5, , 7}. The 64 pairs of
(1 , 2 ) result in 15 distinct 1 + 2 levels from -14 to 14
with the minimum distance of adjacent sum (1 + 2 ) levels
(DASLs) of 2. Note that the positive levels are not shown
in Table I, because their pattern is symmetric to the negative
levels. We solve the ambiguity problem by splitting a level that
corresponds to -different c3 values into -different levels by
modifying the values properly (See step 2). Any increase in
the number of 1 + 2 levels for the purpose of resolving the
ambiguity, however, will decrease the minimum DASL, and
thereby lower the achievable rate [10]. Therefore, we try not
to disassociate multiple pairs (1 , 2 ) that happily correspond
to a single c3 (See the boxed entries in Table I), because
this many-to-one mapping helps reduce the number of sum
(1 + 2 ) levels (NSLs).
The total NSL can be obtained simply by counting the
number of distinct c3 values, since each of multiple c3 values
in the same level will be split to a distinct level for the
ambiguity-free detection. This counting is marked with the
superscripts from 1 to 14 in Table I, and it can be seen that
the NSL is 27 (including the omitted positive levels). However,
the NSL may differ for different choices of the bit-mapping.
Thus, in step 1 we need to calculate the NSLs for all
8! bit-mappings, and find the one with the minimum NSL.

Sorted

s1l + s2l 0

DASL

2 +

.....
.....

4 + 2

2 + +

.....
.....

A computer search reveals that there are 1344 different bitmappings that achieve the minimum NSL of 27. Interestingly
enough, the c3 pattern, not the values, is the same for all of
the 1344 bit-mappings. Because of this isomorphism, we may
arbitrarily choose one of these 1344 bit-mappings, for example
the one in Table I, as the initial bit-mapping that will be used
for the subsequent symbol constellation design.
B. Step 2: Symbol constellation design
At step 2 we find the constellation points { }7=0 that
actually achieve the ambiguity-free 27 1 + 2 levels using the
bit-mapping found in step 1. Recall that the boxed entries in
Table I with the index numbers 5, 9, 11, and 14 that correspond
to the respective same c3 values should not be disassociated
to keep the NSL to the minimum 27. Thus, we require that
5) :
9) :

0 + 3 = 1 + 2 ,
0 + 5 = 1 + 4 ,

11) :
0 + 6 = 2 + 4 ,
14) : 0 + 7 = 1 + 6 = 2 + 5 = 3 + 4 .

(3)

Using the above equations the eight unknowns { }7=0 can

be reduced to three unknowns , , and shown in Fig. 2.
Then, the 27 distinct 1 + 2 levels can be listed as shown in
Table II, where the common bias term 20 is removed, and
the superscripts are indexed as those of the pairs in Table I.
By an inductive reasoning, it can be shown that
< < ,

(4)

using the condition that the 27 levels are uniformly spaced,

which is required to maximize the minimum DASL. Using
(4), we can sort the 27 levels in the ascending order as shown
in Table II, where each DASL is seen to be one of {,
, 2}.
Therefore, the maximization of the minimum DASL is
achieved when the DASLs are all same:
= = 2.

(5)

Assuming 0 = 7 and 7 = 7 without loss of generality, we

have the following identities (See Fig. 2.):
7 0 = 4 + 2 + = 14.

(6)

YANG et al.: MODIFIED HIGH-ORDER PAMS FOR BINARY CODED PHYSICAL-LAYER NETWORK CODING

691

TABLE III
P ROPOSED 8-PAM CONSTELLATION AND ITS 27 SUM LEVELS
l

s1 , s2

c1 , c2
l

s1

14/13
14/13

-7

-77/13

-49/13

-35/13

35/13

49/13

77/13

010

011

111

110

100

101

001

000

000

001

101

010

011

110

100

111

c3
l

+ s2

( s1 , s2 )

or

( s2 , s1 )

Initial

1)

Optimal

(-7,-7)

0 0 0 1)

0 0 0 1)

-168/13

(-7,-77/13)2)

0 0 1 2)

0 0 1 2)

-154/13

(-77/13,-77/13)4)

0 0 0 4)

0 0 0 4)

-140/13

(-7,-49/13)3)

1 0 1 3)

1 0 0 3)

-126/13

(-7,-35/13)5),(-77/13,-49/13)5)

1 0 0 5)

1 0 1 5)

-112/13

(-77/13,-35/13)7)

1 0 1 7)

1 0 0 7)

-98/13

(-49/13,-49/13)8)

0 0 0 8)

0 0 0 8)

-84/13

(-49/13,-35/13)10)

0 0 1 10)

0 0 1 10)

-70/13

(-35/13,-35/13)13)

0 0 0 13)

0 0 0 13)

-56/13

(-7,35/13)6)

1 1 0 6)

0 1 0 6)

-42/13

(-7,49/13)9),(-77/13,35/13)9)

1 1 1 9)

0 1 1 9)

-28/13

(-77/13,49/13)12)

1 1 0 12)

0 1 0 12)

-14/13

(-7,77/13)11),(-49/13,35/13)11)

0 1 1 11)

1 1 0 11)

(-7,7)14),(-77/13)14),(-49/13,49/13)14),(-35/13,35/13)14)

0 1 0 14)

1 1 1 14)

-14

Initial
Optimal

14

d3

d3

d1

d1

d2

d2

>

13
28

13

42

>

13
84

13

=
=

126
13

126
13

Fig. 3.

From (5) and (6), we get

= 14/13,

= 28/13,

= 70/13.

(7)

The final constellation points and the resulting ambiguity-free

27 levels are shown in Table III.
C. Step 3: Finding the optimal bit-mapping
Although all of the 1344 bit-mappings employing the constellation designed in step 2 will be free from the detection
ambiguity, they will have different c3 values under the function in (2) (See Table III). Among the 1344 bit-mappings
we want to find the one that maximizes the achievable rate.
Using the log-likelihood ratio value-based rate calculation
(numerical) method in [11], we find that there exist 48 optimal
bit-mappings for 8-PAM and one of them is shown in Table
III. Note that the optimal bit-mapping has larger the effective
Euclidean free distances, denoted as , = 1, 2, 3, in Table
III, than the initial bit-mapping given in step 1. Therefore, the
optimal bit-mapping can also be obtained by finding the one
of the 1344 bit-mappings, which maximizes the averaged-sum
value of [10].
If we apply the above 3-step design procedure to 4-PAM,
we shall have the constellation points (3, 1.5, 1.5, 3) and
the corresponding bit-mapping (00, 01, 10, 11).
III. S IMULATION R ESULTS
We compare the achievable sum rates of different PNC
techniques with that of the three-stage network coding [3]
under the non-saturated SNR regime. In Fig. 3, note that
the lattice code based PNC (LC-PNC) shows almost 50%
gain at the cost of the highest complexity among all PNC
schemes [8]. The proposed 16-QAM PNC shows about 40%
gain which is almost the same as that of the NBC-PNC,
even though its complexity is only 25% of that of NBC-PNC
[7]. The performance loss of the NBC-PNC is due to the
modulo- operation while the degradation of the proposed
PNC is due to the reduced minimum DASL, For example,
the minimum DASL of the proposed 8-PAM is 14/13 whereas
the minimum DASL of the uniform 8-PAM is 2. This loss
becomes larger with increasing modulation size because more

Achievable sum-rates of different relaying techniques.

levels are required for the ambiguity-free detection. For the

64-QAM, the proposed PNC shows about 26% achievable rate
gain which is the half of the NBC-PNC gain, while it has only
about 8.3% complexity of the NBC-PNC [7].
IV. C ONCLUSIONS
We have proposed new non-uniform -PAM signal constellations, which lowers the complexity of the PNC with highorder PAMs by utilizing binary codes. It can also be shown
that the proposed PNC is applicable to a relay channel with
asymmetric SNRs, using the power control along with the
superposition coding.
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