Two birds with one stone: Exploiting direct links for multiuser two-way relaying systems

This Letter proposes a mechanism to combine multiuser diversity (MUD) and incremental relaying in a multiuser two-way relaying system, where one end-source exchanges messages with one out of N available end-sources by using a half-duplex amplify-and-forward (AF) relay. Outage analysis for the proposed scheme is carried out and, compared with the time division broadcast (TDBC) protocol, reveals that it not only realizes full diversity order (N+1) but also achieves improved expected spectral efficiency. Also, it is indicated that the expected spectral efficiency of the proposed scheme approaches that of the analog network coding (ANC) protocol in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. Furthermore, the finite-SNR diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) is examined, from which the superiority of the proposed scheme to TDBC is confirmed as well. Other insightful comparisons in terms of the outage performance are presented that show the practical usefulness of our multiuser two-way relaying framework.