Relay cooperation schemes for the multiple access relay channel: Compute-and-forward and successive interference cancellation

In this paper, we propose two relay cooperation schemes for a Multiple Access Relay Channel (MARC). The proposed schemes make use of a lattice-based approach to block Markov encoding. The first scheme applies Compute-And-Forward (CAF) at the relay and Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) at the destination; whereas the second one applies SIC at both the relay and the destination. A detailed analysis of the rates achieved by these two schemes is also provided. The schemes are further studied under two specific channel settings.