The degrees of freedom (DoF) of the MIMO Y-channel, a multi-way communication
network consisting of 3 users and a relay, are characterized for arbitrary
number of antennas. The converse is provided by cut-set bounds and novel
genie-aided bounds. The achievability is shown by a scheme that uses
beamforming to establish network coding on-the-fly at the relay in the uplink,
and zero-forcing pre-coding in the downlink. It is shown that the network has
min{2M_2+2M_3,M_1+M_2+M_3,2N} DoF, where M_j and N represent the number of
antennas at user j and the relay, respectively. Thus, in the extreme case where
M_1+M_2+M_3 dominates the DoF expression and is smaller than N, the network has
the same DoF as the MAC between the 3 users and the relay. In this case, a
decode and forward strategy is optimal. In the other extreme where 2N
dominates, the DoF of the network is twice that of the aforementioned MAC, and
hence network coding is necessary. As a byproduct of this work, it is shown
that channel output feedback from the relay to the users has no impact on the
DoF of this channel.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, ISIT 201
