Phase-Level Synchronization for Physical-Layer Network Coding

Physical-layer Network Coding (PNC) brings throughput improvement for wireless networks. However, its synchronization requirement is widely recognized as an obstacle to its implementation. In this paper, the authors focus on phase-level synchronization and propose a time-slotted carrier synchronization scheme for PNC. They then analyze the phase error tolerance of PNC under different Bit Error Rate (BER) requirements, and the synchronization overhead for obtaining synchronous signals below the phase error margin. They also consider the impact of different hardware (in particular, the phase-locked loop) parameters on the overhead in their analysis. Afterwards, they evaluate the performance of the proposed synchronization scheme with simulations.