English

A Simple Capacity Outer Bound for Two-Way Channels and Capacity Approximation Results

Information Theory 2020-09-28 v3 math.IT

Abstract

Channel symmetry properties that imply the tightness of Shannon's random coding inner bound have recently been used to determine the capacity region of discrete-memoryless two-way channels (DM-TWCs). For channels without such symmetry properties, outer bounds are often needed to estimate the capacity region. However, validating symmetry conditions and/or evaluating non-trivial outer bounds are computationally demanding, especially for channels with large input and output alphabets. In this paper, three easy-to-check conditions that identify DM-TWCs with no such symmetry properties as well as an easy-to-compute outer bound are derived. The bound is obtained from Shannon's inner bound computation but is non-trivial. Using this outer bound, approximate capacity results can be established for certain DM-TWCs. The results are illustrated by two examples.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.03954,
  title  = {A Simple Capacity Outer Bound for Two-Way Channels and Capacity Approximation Results},
  author = {Jian-Jia Weng and Fady Alajaji and Tamás Linder},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.03954},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

an error in Eq. (2) corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:44:09.476Z