On the Solvability of 2-pair Unicast Networks --- A Cut-based Characterization

In this paper, we propose a subnetwork decomposition/combination approach to investigate the single rate $2$-pair unicast problem. It is shown that the solvability of a $2$-pair unicast problem is completely determined by four specific link subsets, namely, $\mathcal A_{1,1}$, $\mathcal A_{2,2}$, $\mathcal A_{1,2}$ and $\mathcal A_{2,1}$ of its underlying network. As a result, an efficient cut-based algorithm to determine the solvability of a $2$-pair unicast problem is presented.