Superposition Coding Strategies: Design and Experimental Evaluation

The authors design and implement a software-radio system for Superposition Coding (SC), a multiuser transmission scheme that deliberately introduces interference among user signals at the transmitter, using a library of off-the-shelf point-to-point channel codes. They experimentally determine the set of rate-pairs achieved by this transmission scheme under a packet-error constraint. Their results suggest that SC can provide substantial gains in spectral efficiencies over those achieved by orthogonal schemes such as Time Division Multiplexing. Their findings also question the practical utility of the Gaussian approximation for the inter-user interference in Superposition-Coded systems.