In this paper, we extend Construction A of lattices to the ring of algebraic integers of a general imaginary quadratic field that may not form a principal ideal domain (PID). We show that such a construction can produce good lattices for coding in the sense of Poltyrev and for MSE quantization. As an application, we then apply the proposed lattices to the compute-and-forward paradigm with limited feedback. Without feedback, compute-and-forward is typically realized with lattice codes over the ring of integers, the ring of Gaussian integers, or the ring of Eisenstein integers, which are all PIDs. A novel scheme called adaptive compute-and-forward is proposed to exploit the limited feedback about the channel state by working with the best ring of imaginary quadratic integers. Simulation results show that by adaptively choosing the best ring among the considered ones according to the limited feedback, the proposed adaptive compute-and-forward provides a better performance than that provided by the conventional compute-and-forward scheme which works over Gaussian or Eisenstein integers solely.

We consider the problem of physical-layer network coding when the channel exhibits block fading. Specifically, we focus on the use of lattice codes in a compute-and-forward framework for realizing physical-layer network coding. We construct a novel lattice ensemble called the root-Low-Density Construction-A (root-LDA) ensemble which uses Construction A with root-low-density parity check (LDPC) codes. Using extensive simulations, we show that the proposed lattice codes exhibit full diversity when used over the block fading channels. In addition, their performance is comparable to the performance of LDA lattice codes optimized by the progressive edge growth algorithm over the additive white Gaussian noise AWGN channel. This suggests that root-LDA lattice codes provide a robust solution to the problem of implementing physical layer network coding over fading channels.

We consider the compute-and-forward relay network with limited feedback. A novel scheme called adaptive compute-and-forward is proposed to exploit the channel knowledge by working with the best ring of imaginary quadratic integers. This is enabled by generalizing Construction A lattices to other rings of imaginary quadratic integers which may not form principal ideal domains and by showing such construction can produce good lattices for coding in the sense of Poltyrev and for MSE quantization. Since there are channel coefficients (complex numbers) which are closer to elements of rings of imaginary quadratic integers other than Gaussian and Eisenstein integers, by always working with the best ring among them, we can obtain better performance than that provided by working over Gaussian or Eisenstein integers.

Communication in the presence of bounded timing asynchronism, which is known to the receiver but cannot be easily compensated, is studied. Examples of such situations include point-to-point communication over intersymbol interference (ISI) channels and asynchronous wireless networks. In these scenarios, although the receiver may know all the delays, it is often not an easy task for the receiver to compensate the delays as the signals are mixed together. A novel framework, which is called interleave/deinterleave transform (IDT), is proposed to deal with this problem. It is shown that the IDT allows one to design the delays so that quasi-cyclic (QC) codes with a proper shifting constraint can be used accordingly. When used in conjunction with QC codes, IDT provides significantly better performance than existing schemes relying solely on cyclic codes. Two instances of asynchronous physical-layer network coding, namely, the integer-forcing equalization for ISI channels and asynchronous compute-and-forward, are then studied. For integer-forcing equalization, the proposed scheme provides improved performance over using cyclic codes. For asynchronous compute-and-forward, the proposed scheme shows that there is no loss in the achievable information rates due to delays that are integer multiples of the symbol duration. Furthermore, the proposed approach shows that delays introduced by the channel can sometimes be exploited to obtain higher information rates than those obtainable in the synchronous case. The proposed IDT can be thought of as a generalization of the interleaving/deinterleaving idea proposed by Wang et al., which allows the use of QC codes, thereby substantially increasing the design space.

Communication in the presence of bounded timing asynchronism which is known to the receiver but cannot be easily compensated is studied. Examples of such situations include point-to-point communication over inter-symbol interference (ISI) channels and asynchronous wireless networks. In these scenarios, although the receiver may know all the delays, it may not be an easy task for the receiver to compensate the delays as the signals are mixed together. A novel framework called interleave/deinterleave transform (IDT) is proposed to deal with this problem. It is shown that the IDT allows one to design the delays so that quasi-cyclic (QC) codes with a proper shifting constraint can be used accordingly. When used in conjunction with QC codes, IDT provides significantly better performance than existing schemes relying solely on cyclic codes. Two instances of asynchronous physical-layer network coding, namely the integer-forcing equalization for ISI channels and asynchronous compute-and-forward, are then studied where the gap-to-capacity can be bridged for the former and significant gains can be obtained for the later. The proposed IDT can be thought of as a generalization of the interleaving/deinterleaving idea in [1] which allows the use of QC codes thereby substantially increasing the design space.