Physical Layer Computation as NOMA for Integrated Wireless Systems

We consider two users A and B wanting to exchange their messages M-A and M-B via a relay in a wireless communication network. To this aim, we have two methods: direct forward (DF) and computation and forward (CAF). In the first method, after an orthogonal multiple access (OMA) or non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) phase, the receiver decodes the two messages. In the second method, after a NOMA phase, the receiver decodes only the (modulo) sum. In the latter case the capacity region (computation region) is not known. This paper compares the two methods. To such aim, we propose a unified coding framework and identify a lower bound of achievable computation rates. We consider three constellations for the symmetric two-user Gaussian channel with Eisenstein constellation showing highest performance. We also show that a minimum signal-to-noise ratio is required for our CAF method to outperform DF, and we obtain the numerical values of such minimum ratios for the three constellations. Finally, we show achievability of our bounds, which is proved to require affine codes for computation, which has not been proved before. Overall, our results are useful for communication system designers towards practical implementation of multiple access methods in integrated wireless systems.