Cooperative Multi-Cell Networks: Impact of Limited-Capacity Backhaul and Inter-Users Links

Cooperative technology is expected to have a great impact on the performance of cellular or, more generally, infrastructure networks. Both multicell processing (cooperation among base stations) and relaying (cooperation at the user level) are currently being investigated. In this presentation, recent results regarding the performance of multicell processing and user cooperation under the assumption of limited-capacity interbase station and inter-user links, respectively, are reviewed. The survey focuses on related results derived for non-fading uplink and downlink channels of simple cellular system models. The analytical treatment, facilitated by these simple setups, enhances the insight into the limitations imposed by limited-capacity constraints on the gains achievable by cooperative techniques

Compound Multiple Access Channels with Partial Cooperation

A two-user discrete memoryless compound multiple access channel with a common message and conferencing decoders is considered. The capacity region is characterized in the special cases of physically degraded channels and unidirectional cooperation, and achievable rate regions are provided for the general case. The results are then extended to the corresponding Gaussian model. In the Gaussian setup, the provided achievable rates are shown to lie within some constant number of bits from the boundary of the capacity region in several special cases. An alternative model, in which the encoders are connected by conferencing links rather than having a common message, is studied as well, and the capacity region for this model is also determined for the cases of physically degraded channels and unidirectional cooperation. Numerical results are also provided to obtain insights about the potential gains of conferencing at the decoders and encoders.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Strong Secrecy for Multiple Access Channels

We show strongly secret achievable rate regions for two different wiretap multiple-access channel coding problems. In the first problem, each encoder has a private message and both together have a common message to transmit. The encoders have entropy-limited access to common randomness. If no common randomness is available, then the achievable region derived here does not allow for the secret transmission of a common message. The second coding problem assumes that the encoders do not have a common message nor access to common randomness. However, they may have a conferencing link over which they may iteratively exchange rate-limited information. This can be used to form a common message and common randomness to reduce the second coding problem to the first one. We give the example of a channel where the achievable region equals zero without conferencing or common randomness and where conferencing establishes the possibility of secret message transmission. Both coding problems describe practically relevant networks which need to be secured against eavesdropping attacks.Comment: 55 page

Gaussian Broadcast Channels with an Orthogonal and Bidirectional Cooperation Link

This paper considers a system where one transmitter broadcasts a single common message to two receivers linked by a bidirectional cooperation channel, which is assumed to be orthogonal to the downlink channel. Assuming a simplified setup where, in particular, scalar relaying protocols are used and channel coding is not exploited, we want to provide elements of response to several questions of practical interest. Here are the main underlying issues: 1. The way of recombining the signals at the receivers; 2. The optimal number of cooperation rounds; 3. The way of cooperating (symmetrically or asymmetrically; which receiver should start cooperating in the latter case); 4. The influence of spectral resources. These issues are considered by studying the performance of the assumed system through analytical results when they are derivable and through simulation results. For the particular choices we made, the results sometimes do not coincide with those available for the discrete counterpart of the studied channel