Link-By-Link Coded Physical Layer Network Coding on Impulsive Noise Channels

Physical-Layer Network Coding (PNC) employed on a conventional two-way relay channel (TWRC) is an active research area due to the potential doubling of the throughput compared with traditional routing. In this paper, we investigate the effects of impulsive noise added at the relay of a TWRC employing link-by-link coded PNC, where the coding scheme of interest is the turbo code. The Gaussian mixture model is chosen to model the impulsive noise and its effect on the performance of rate 1/2 and rate 1/3 turbo codes on the TWRC is evaluated through simulation results and extrinsic information transfer (ExIT) charts. An error floor analysis is also presented for different mixtures, α, of impulsive noise and theoretical bounds are derived that explain the source of the error floors exhibited in the simulation results.