English

Multiple Access Outerbounds and the Inseparability of Parallel Interference Channels

Information Theory 2016-11-17 v1 math.IT

Abstract

It is known that the capacity of parallel (multi-carrier) Gaussian point-to-point, multiple access and broadcast channels can be achieved by separate encoding for each subchannel (carrier) subject to a power allocation across carriers. In this paper we show that such a separation does not apply to parallel Gaussian interference channels in general. A counter-example is provided in the form of a 3 user interference channel where separate encoding can only achieve a sum capacity of log(SNR)+o(log(SNR))\log({SNR})+o(\log({SNR})) per carrier while the actual capacity, achieved only by joint-encoding across carriers, is 3/2log(SNR))+o(log(SNR))3/2\log({SNR}))+o(\log({SNR})) per carrier. As a byproduct of our analysis, we propose a class of multiple-access-outerbounds on the capacity of the 3 user interference channel.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0802.2125,
  title  = {Multiple Access Outerbounds and the Inseparability of Parallel Interference Channels},
  author = {Viveck R. Cadambe and Syed A. Jafar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0802.2125},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:12:47.904Z