physically-degraded-relay-channel

Physically degraded relay channel

When the destination is a degraded version of the relay observation, decode-forward meets the cut-set bound.

Relay Finite alphabet Discrete memoryless Degraded Capacity Exact Single-letter characterization

Channel and question

Input
Source input \(X\) and relay input \(X_r\).
Output
Relay observation \(Y_r\) and destination output \(Y\).
Law
The channel factors as \(p(y_r|x,x_r)p(y|y_r,x_r)\).
Quantity
Relay-channel capacity \(C\), measured in bits per channel use.

Criterion. Average-error source-to-destination capacity.

  • The relay acts causally.
  • Average decoding error vanishes.

Current status

\[C=\max_{p(x,x_r)}\min\{I(X;Y_r|X_r),\ I(X,X_r;Y)\}\]
Known results and bounds for Physically degraded relay channel
ResultRelationMethodYear
Lower\(C\ge\max\min\{I(X;Y_r|X_r),I(X,X_r;Y)\}\)The relay fully decodes and cooperates with the source.1979
Upper\(C\le\max\min\{I(X;Y_r|X_r),I(X,X_r;Y)\}\)Degradedness reduces the cut-set observation term.1979

Formal verification

Lean coverageFormally stated

New statements await mathematical review and proofs.

Claims

  • The physically degraded relay capacity under strictly causal relaying.
    operational-capacity · exact capacity · solved · Formally stated · v1
Lean declarations (1)

References

  1. Thomas M. Cover and Abbas El Gamal (1979). Capacity Theorems for the Relay Channel. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. DOI 10.1109/TIT.1979.1056084.
  2. Abbas El Gamal and Young-Han Kim (2011). Network Information Theory. Cambridge University Press. DOI 10.1017/CBO9781139030687.

Discussion

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