Trellis- and network-coded modulation for decode-and-forward two-way relaying over time-varying channels

We present a bandwidth-efficient joint channel coding-modulation scheme conceived for the broadcast channel (BC) of Decode-and-forward Two-way Relaying (DF-TWR), where Trellis-coded modulation (TCM) is intrinsically amalgamated with network-coded modulation (NCM) for achieving both a channel coding gain and a high throughput. We conceive a low-complexity receiver algorithm for our joint Trellis- and Network-coded modulation (TC-NCM) scheme, which applies decoding and demodulation simultaneously, without the need to first demodulate the signal before decoding, as in the traditional solutions. As a further contribution, the TC-NCM scheme is intrinsically amalgamated with adaptive transceiver techniques. We then further investigate the performance of our near-instantaneously adaptive discrete-rate TC-NC-QAM/PSK scheme. Both simulation results and numerical analysis are presented, which are compared to the performance of traditional NCM schemes. The results show that our scheme not only increases the achievable transmission rate, but also improves the reliability, yet it is of modest complexity