Physical-layer network coding: Tutorial, survey, and beyond

The concept of physical-layer network coding (PNC) was proposed in 2006 for application in wireless networks. Since then it has developed into a subfield of network coding with wide implications. The basic idea of PNC is to exploit the mixing of signals that occurs naturally when electromagnetic (EM) waves are superimposed on one another. In particular, at a receiver, the simultaneous transmissions by several transmitters result in the reception of a weighted sum of the signals. This weighted sum is a form of network coding operation by itself. Alternatively, the received signal could be transformed and mapped to other forms of network coding. Exploiting these facts turns out to have profound and fundamental ramifications. Subsequent works by various researchers have led to many new results in the domains of (1) wireless communication, (2) information theory, and (3) wireless networking. The purpose of this paper is fourfold. First, we give a brief tutorial on the basic concept of PNC. Second, we survey and discuss recent key results in the three aforementioned areas. Third, we examine a critical issue in PNC: synchronization. It has been a common belief that PNC requires tight synchronization. Recent results suggest, however, that PNC may actually benefit from asynchrony. Fourth, we propose that PNC is not just for wireless networks; it can also be useful in optical networks. We provide an example showing that the throughput of a passive optical network (PON) could potentially be raised by 100% with PNC.