Decode-Forward Transmission for the Two-Way Relay Channels

We propose composite decode-forward (DF) schemes for the two-way relay channel in both the full- and half-duplex modes by combining coherent relaying, independent relaying and partial relaying strategies. For the full-duplex mode, the relay partially decodes each user's information in each block and forwards this partial information coherently with the source user to the destination user in the next block as in block Markov coding. In addition, the relay independently broadcasts a binning index of both users' decoded information parts in the next block as in independent network coding. Each technique has a different impact on the relay power usage and the rate region. We further analyze in detail the independent partial DF scheme and derive in closed-form link regimes when this scheme achieves a strictly larger rate region than just time-sharing between its constituent techniques, direct transmission and independent DF relaying, and when it reduces to a simpler scheme. For the half-duplex mode, we propose a 6-phase time-division scheme that incorporates all considered relaying techniques and uses joint decoding simultaneously over all receiving phases. Numerical results show significant rate gains over existing DF schemes, obtained by performing link adaptation of the composite scheme based on the identified link regimes.