We use the idea of dependence balance to obtain a new outer bound for the capacity region of the discrete memoryless multiple access channel with noiseless feedback (MAC-FB). We consider a binary additive noisy MAC-FB whose feedback capacity is not known. The binary additive noisy MAC considered in this paper can be viewed as the discrete counterpart of the Gaussian MAC-FB. Ozarow established that the capacity region of the two-user Gaussian MAC-FB is given by the cut-set bound. Our result shows that for the discrete version of the channel considered by Ozarow, this is not the case. Direct evaluation of our outer bound is intractable due to an involved auxiliary random variable whose large cardinality prohibits an exhaustive search. We overcome this difficulty by using functional analysis to explicitly evaluate our outer bound. Our outer bound is strictly less than the cut-set bound at all points on the capacity region where feedback increases capacity. In addition, we explicitly evaluate the Cover-Leung achievable rate region for the binary additive noisy MAC-FB in consideration. Furthermore, using the tools developed for the evaluation of our outer bound, we also explicitly characterize the boundary of the feedback capacity region of the binary erasure MAC, for which the Cover-Leung achievable rate region is known to be tight. This last result confirms that the feedback strategies developed by Kramer for the binary erasure MAC are capacity achieving.
We obtain new outer bounds on the capacity regions of the two-user multiple access channel with generalized feedback (MAC-GF) and the two-user interference channel with generalized feedback (IC-GF). These outer bounds are based on the idea of dependence balance which was proposed by Hekstra and Willems [1]. To illustrate the usefulness of our outer bounds, we investigate three different channel models. We first consider a Gaussian MAC with noisy feedback (MAC-NF), where transmitter $k$, $k=1,2$, receives a feedback $Y_{F_{k}}$, which is the channel output $Y$ corrupted with additive white Gaus…
We consider a public multi-user information embedding (watermarking) system in which two messages (watermarks) are independently embedded into two correlated covertexts and are transmitted through a multiple-access attack channel. The tradeoff between the achievable embedding rates and the average distortions for the two embedders is studied. For given distortion levels, inner and outer bounds for the embedding capacity region are obtained in single-letter form. Tighter bounds are also given for independent covertexts.
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 $\log({SNR})+o(\log({SNR}))$ per carrier while the actual capacity, achieved only by joint-encoding across carriers…
This paper studies a two-user state-dependent Gaussian multiple-access channel (MAC) with state noncausally known at one encoder. Two scenarios are considered: i) each user wishes to communicate an independent message to the common receiver, and ii) the two encoders send a common message to the receiver and the non-cognitive encoder (i.e., the encoder that does not know the state) sends an independent individual message (this model is also known as the MAC with degraded message sets). For both scenarios, new outer bounds on the capacity region are derived, which improve uniformly over the best…
We consider a homogeneous multiple cellular scenario with multiple users per cell, i.e., $K\geq 1$ where $K$ denotes the number of users in a cell. In this scenario, a degrees of freedom outer bound as well as an achievable scheme that attains the degrees of freedom outer bound of the multicell multiple access channel (MAC) with constant channel coefficients are investigated. The users have $M$ antennas, and the base stations are equipped with $N$ antennas. The found outer bound is general in that it characterizes a degrees of freedom upper bound for $K\geq 1$ and $L>1$ where $L$ denotes the n…
In this paper, we study the problem of secret communication over a multiple-access channel with a common message. Here, we assume that two transmitters have confidential messages, which must be kept secret from the wiretapper (the second receiver), and both of them have access to a common message which can be decoded by the two receivers. We call this setting as Multiple-Access Wiretap Channel with Common message (MAWC-CM). For this setting, we derive general inner and outer bounds on the secrecy capacity region for the discrete memoryless case and show that these bounds meet each other for a …
We consider the capacity of memoryless finite-state multiple access channel (FS-MAC) with causal asymmetric noisy state information available at both transmitters and complete state information available at the receiver. Single letter inner and outer bounds are provided for the capacity of such channels when the state process is independent and identically distributed. The outer bound is attained by observing that the proposed inner bound is tight for the sum-rate capacity.
For discrete memoryless multiple-access channels, we propose a general definition of variable length codes with a measure of the transmission rates at the receiver side. This gives a receiver perspective on the multiple-access channel coding problem and allows us to characterize the region of achievable rates when the receiver is able to decode each transmitted message at a different instant of time.We show an outer bound on this region and derive a simple coding scheme that can achieve, in particular settings, all rates within the region delimited by the outer bound. In addition, we propose a…
In this paper we consider the identification (ID) via multiple access channels (MACs). In the general MAC the ID capacity region includes the ordinary transmission (TR) capacity region. In this paper we discuss the converse coding theorem. We estimate two types of error probabilities of identification for rates outside capacity region, deriving some function which serves as a lower bound of the sum of two error probabilities of identification. This function has a property that it tends to zero as $n\to \infty$ for noisy channels satisfying the strong converse property. Using this property, we …
In this paper, we use the linear deterministic approximation model to study a two user multiple access channel mutually interfering with a point to point link, which represents a basic setup of a cellular system. We derive outer bounds on the achievable sum rate and construct coding schemes achieving the outer bounds. For a large parameter range, the sum capacity is identical to the sum capacity of the interference channel obtained by silencing the weaker user in the multiple access channel. For other interference configurations, the sum rate can be increased using interference alignment, whic…
We consider the Gaussian Multiple Access Wire-Tap Channel (GMAC-WT). In this scenario, multiple users communicate with an intended receiver in the presence of an intelligent and informed wire-tapper who receives a degraded version of the signal at the receiver. We define a suitable security measure for this multi-access environment. We derive an outer bound for the rate region such that secrecy to some pre-determined degree can be maintained. We also find, using Gaussian codebooks, an achievable such secrecy region. Gaussian codewords are shown to achieve the sum capacity outer bound, and the …
In this paper, we investigate an unsourced random access scheme for massive machine-type communications (mMTC) in the sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks with sporadic data traffic. Firstly, we establish a general framework for massive unsourced random access based on a two-layer signal coding, i.e., an outer code and an inner code. In particular, considering Rician fading in the scenario of mMTC, we design a novel codeword activity detection algorithm for the inner code of unsourced random access based on the distribution of received signals by exploiting the maximum likelihood (ML) metho…
In this paper we study the impact of a relay node in a two-user network. We assume a random access collision channel model with erasures. In particular we obtain an inner and an outer bound for the stability region.
This paper investigates practical 5G strategies for power-balanced non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). By allowing multiple users to share the same time and frequency, NOMA can scale up the number of served users and increase spectral efficiency compared with existing orthogonal multiple access (OMA). Conventional NOMA schemes with successive interference cancellation (SIC) do not work well when users with comparable received powers transmit together. To allow power-balanced NOMA (more exactly, near power-balanced NOMA), this paper investigates a new NOMA architecture, named Network-Coded M…
This article presents a novel enhancement to the random spreading based coding scheme developed by Pradhan et al.\ for the unsourced multiple access channel. The original coding scheme features a polar outer code in conjunction with a successive cancellation list decoder (SCLD) and a hard-input soft-output MMSE estimator. In contrast, the proposed scheme employs a soft-input soft-output MMSE estimator for multi-user detection. This is accomplished by replacing the SCLD based polar code with an LDPC code amenable to belief propagation decoding. This novel framework is leveraged to successfully …
Unsourced random access (URA) has emerged as a pragmatic framework for next-generation distributed sensor networks. Within URA, concatenated coding structures are often employed to ensure that the central base station can accurately recover the set of sent codewords during a given transmission period. Many URA algorithms employ independent inner and outer decoders, which can help reduce computational complexity at the expense of a decay in performance. In this article, an enhanced decoding algorithm is presented for a concatenated coding structure consisting of a wide range of inner codes and …
The binary adder is a two-user multiple access channel whose inputs are binary and whose output is the real sum of the inputs. While the Shannon capacity region of this channel is well known, little is known regarding its zero-error capacity region, and a large gap remains between the best inner and outer bounds. In this paper, we provide an improved outer bound for this problem. To that end, we introduce a soft variation of the Saur-Perles-Shelah Lemma, that is then used in conjunction with an outer bound for the Shannon capacity region with an additional common message.
We propose a two-layer coding architecture for communication of multiple users over a shared slotted medium enabling joint collision resolution and decoding. Each user first encodes its information bits with an outer code for reliability, and then transmits these coded bits with possible repetitions over transmission time slots of the access channel. The transmission patterns are dictated by the inner collision-resolution code and collisions with other users' transmissions may occur. We analyze two types of codes for the outer layer: long-blocklength LDPC codes, and short-blocklength algebraic…
In this paper, the multiple access channel (MAC) with channel state is analyzed in a scenario where a) the channel state is known non-causally to the transmitters and b) there is perfect causal feedback from the receiver to the transmitters. An achievable region and an outer bound are found for a discrete memoryless MAC that extend existing results, bringing together ideas from the two separate domains of MAC with state and MAC with feedback. Although this achievable region does not match the outer bound in general, special cases where they meet are identified. In the case of a Gaussian MAC, a…
This paper studies a family of genie-MAC (multiple access channel) outer bounds for K-user Gaussian interference channels. This family is inspired by existing genie-aided bounding mechanisms, but differs from current approaches in its optimization problem formulation and application. The fundamental idea behind these bounds is to create a group of genie receivers that form multiple access channels that can decode a subset of the original interference channel's messages. The MAC sum capacity of each of the genie receivers provides an outer bound on the sum of rates for this subset. The genie-MA…
We study the transmission of a set of correlated sources $(U_1,\cdots,U_K)$ over a Gaussian multiple access relay channel with time asynchronism between the encoders. We assume that the maximum possible offset ${\mathsf{d_{max}}}(n)$ between the transmitters grows without bound as the block length $n \rightarrow \infty$ while the relative ratio ${\mathsf{d_{max}}(n) / n}$ of the maximum possible offset to the block length asymptotically vanishes. For such a joint source-channel coding problem, and under specific gain conditions, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for reliable commun…
Motivated in part by the problem of secure multicast distributed storage, we analyze secrecy rates for a channel in which two transmitters simultaneously multicast to two receivers in the presence of an eavesdropper. Achievable rates are calculated via extensions of a technique due to Chia and El Gamal and the method of output statistics of random binning. Outer bounds are derived for both the degraded and non-degraded versions of the channel, and examples are provided in which the inner and outer bounds meet. The inner bounds recover known results for the multiple-access wiretap channel, broa…
Several security models of multiple-access channel (MAC) are investigated. First, we study the degraded MAC with confidential messages, where two users transmit their confidential messages (no common message) to a destination, and each user obtains a degraded version of the output of the MAC. Each user views the other user as a eavesdropper, and wishes to keep its confidential message as secret as possible from the other user. Measuring each user's uncertainty about the other user's confidential message by equivocation, the inner and outer bounds on the capacity-equivocation region for this mo…
We consider stability of scheduled multiaccess message communication with random coding and joint maximum-likehood decoding of messages. The framework we consider here models both the random message arrivals and the subsequent reliable communication by suitably combining techniques from queueing theory and information theory. The number of messages that may be scheduled for simultaneous transmission is limited to a given maximum value, and the channels from transmitters to receiver are quasi-static, flat, and have independent fades. Requests for message transmissions are assumed to arrive acco…
The capacity region of the Finite-State Multiple Access Channel (FS-MAC) with feedback that may be an arbitrary time-invariant function of the channel output samples is considered. We provided a sequence of inner and outer bounds for this region. These bounds are shown to coincide, and hence yield the capacity region, of FS-MACs where the state process is stationary and ergodic and not affected by the inputs, and for indecomposable FS-MAC when feedback is not allowed. Though the capacity region is `multi-letter' in general, our results yield explicit conclusions when applied to specific scenar…
We consider a cooperative two-user multiaccess channel in which the transmission is controlled by a random state. Both encoders transmit a common message and, one of the encoders also transmits an individual message. We study the capacity region of this communication model for different degrees of availability of the states at the encoders, causally or strictly causally. In the case in which the states are revealed causally to both encoders but not to the decoder we find an explicit characterization of the capacity region in the discrete memoryless case. In the case in which the states are rev…
The physical layer security in the up-link of the wireless communication systems is often modeled as the multiple access wiretap channel (MAC-WT), and recently it has received a lot attention. In this paper, the MAC-WT has been re-visited by considering the situation that the legitimate receiver feeds his received channel output back to the transmitters via two noiseless channels, respectively. This model is called the MAC-WT with noiseless feedback. Inner and outer bounds on the secrecy capacity region of this feedback model are provided. To be specific, we first present a decode-and-forward …
This paper provides new inner and outer bounds on the capacity region of optical intensity multiple access channel (OIMAC) with per-user average or peak power constraint. For the average power constrained OIMAC, our bounds at high power are asymptotically tight, thereby characterizing the asymptotic capacity region. The bounds are extended to K-user OIMAC with average power constraint without loss of asymptotic optimality. For the peak power constrained OIMAC, at high power, we bound the asymptotic capacity region to within 0.09 bits, and determine the asymptotic capacity region in the symmetr…
The feedback sum-rate capacity is established for the symmetric $J$-user Gaussian multiple-access channel (GMAC). The main contribution is a converse bound that combines the dependence-balance argument of Hekstra and Willems (1989) with a variant of the factorization of a convex envelope of Geng and Nair (2014). The converse bound matches the achievable sum-rate of the Fourier-Modulated Estimate Correction strategy of Kramer (2002).
This paper provides comprehensive coding and outer bound for the half-duplex multiple access channel with generalized feedback (MAC-GF). Two users communicate with one destination over a discrete memoryless channel using time division. Each transmission block is divided into 3 time slots with variable durations: the destination is always in receive mode, while each user alternatively transmits and receives during the first 2 time slots, then both cooperate to send information during the last one. The paper proposes two decode-forward based coding schemes, analyzes their rate regions, and also …
In this paper, we study the problem of secret communication over a Compound Multiple Access Channel (MAC). In this channel, we assume that one of the transmitted messages is confidential that is only decoded by its corresponding receiver and kept secret from the other receiver. For this proposed setting (compound MAC with confidential messages), we derive general inner and outer bounds on the secrecy capacity region. Also, as examples, we investigate 'Less noisy' and 'Gaussian' versions of this channel, and extend the results of the discrete memoryless version to these cases. Moreover, providi…
The problem of computing a linear combination of sources over a multiple access channel is studied. Inner and outer bounds on the optimal tradeoff between the communication rates are established when encoding is restricted to random ensembles of homologous codes, namely, structured nested coset codes from the same generator matrix and individual shaping functions, but when decoding is optimized with respect to the realization of the encoders. For the special case in which the desired linear combination is "matched" to the structure of the multiple access channel in a natural sense, these inner…
We study and compare the Shannon capacity region and the stable throughput region for a random access system in which source nodes multicast their messages to multiple destination nodes. Under an erasure channel model which accounts for interference and allows for multipacket reception, we first characterize the Shannon capacity region. We then consider a queueing-theoretic formulation and characterize the stable throughput region for two different transmission policies: a retransmission policy and random linear coding. Our results indicate that for large blocklengths, the random linear coding…
A secret key agreement setup between three users is considered in which each of the users 1 and 2 intends to share a secret key with user 3 and users 1 and 2 are eavesdroppers with respect to each other. The three users observe i.i.d. outputs of correlated sources and there is a generalized discrete memoryless multiple access channel (GDMMAC) from users 1 and 2 to user 3 for communication between the users. The secret key agreement is established using the correlated sources and the GDMMAC. In this setup, inner and outer bounds of the secret key capacity region are investigated. Moreover, for …
A multiple access channel and a point-to-point channel sharing the same medium for communications are considered. We obtain an outer bound for the capacity region of this setup, and we show that this outer bound is achievable in some cases. These cases are mainly when interference is strong or very strong. A sum capacity upper bound is also obtained, which is nearly tight if the interference power at the receivers is low. In this case, using Gaussian codes and treating interference as noise achieves a sum rate close to the upper bound.
In a secure coded caching system, a central server balances the traffic flow between peak and off-peak periods by distributing some public data to the users' caches in advance. Meanwhile, these data are securely protected against the possible colluding users, who might share their cache. We model the system as a flow network and study its capacity region via a network information-theoretic approach. Due to the difficulty of characterizing the capacity region straightforwardly, our approach is two folded from the perspective of network information theory. On one hand, we identify the inner boun…
We study channel resolvability for the discrete memoryless multiple-access channel with cribbing, i.e., the characterization of the amount of randomness required at the inputs to approximately produce a chosen i.i.d. output distribution according to KL divergence. We analyze resolvability rates when one encoder cribs (i) the input of the other encoder; or the output of the other encoder, (ii) non-causally, (iii) causally, or (iv) strictly-causally. For scenarios (i)-(iii), we exactly characterize the channel resolvability region. For (iv), we provide inner and outer bounds for the channel reso…
Unsourced random-access (U-RA) is a type of grant-free random access with a virtually unlimited number of users, of which only a certain number $K_a$ are active on the same time slot. Users employ exactly the same codebook, and the task of the receiver is to decode the list of transmitted messages. Recently a concatenated coding construction for U-RA on the AWGN channel was presented, in which a sparse regression code (SPARC) is used as an inner code to create an effective outer OR-channel. Then an outer code is used to resolve the multiple-access interference in the OR-MAC. In this work we sh…
We introduce the problem of determining the identity of a byzantine user (internal adversary) in a communication system. We consider a two-user discrete memoryless multiple access channel where either user may deviate from the prescribed behaviour. Owing to the noisy nature of the channel, it may be overly restrictive to attempt to detect all deviations. In our formulation, we only require detecting deviations which impede the decoding of the non-deviating user's message. When neither user deviates, correct decoding is required. When one user deviates, the decoder must either output a pair of …
In these series of multi-part papers, a systematic study of fundamental limits of communications in interference networks is established. Here, interference network is referred to as a general single-hop communication scenario with arbitrary number of transmitters and receivers, and also arbitrary distribution of messages among transmitters and receivers. It is shown that the information flow in such networks follows similar derivations from many aspects. This systematic study is launched by considering the basic building blocks in Part I. The Multiple Access Channel (MAC), the Broadcast Chann…
The problem of simultaneously generating a secret key (SK) and private key (PK) pair among three terminals via public discussion is investigated, in which each terminal observes a component of correlated sources. All three terminals are required to generate a common secret key concealed from an eavesdropper that has access to public discussion, while two designated terminals are required to generate an extra private key concealed from both the eavesdropper and the remaining terminal. An outer bound on the SK-PK capacity region was established in [1], and was shown to be achievable for one case…
This paper establishes the equivalence between cognitive medium access and the competitive multi-armed bandit problem. First, the scenario in which a single cognitive user wishes to opportunistically exploit the availability of empty frequency bands in the spectrum with multiple bands is considered. In this scenario, the availability probability of each channel is unknown to the cognitive user a priori. Hence efficient medium access strategies must strike a balance between exploring the availability of other free channels and exploiting the opportunities identified thus far. By adopting a Baye…
This paper investigates the joint source-channel coding problem of sending two correlated memoryless sources with common part over a memoryless multiple access channel (MAC). An inner bound and two outer bounds on the achievable distortion region are derived. In particular, they respectively recover the existing bounds for several special cases, such as communication without common part, lossless communication, and noiseless communication. When specialized to quadratic Gaussian communication case, transmitting Gaussian sources with Gaussian common part over Gaussian MAC, the inner bound and ou…
This paper focuses on the problem of separately modulating and jointly estimating two independent continuous-valued parameters sent over a Gaussian multiple-access channel (MAC) under the mean square error (MSE) criterion. To this end, we first improve an existing lower bound on the MSE that is obtained using the parameter modulation-estimation techniques for the single-user additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. As for the main contribution of this work, this improved modulation-estimation analysis is generalized to the model of the two-user Gaussian MAC, which will likely become an im…
This work considers relay assisted transmission for multiuser networks when the relay has no access to the codebooks used by the transmitters. The relay is called oblivious for this reason. Of particular interest is the generalized compress-and-forward (GCF) strategy, where the destinations jointly decode the compression indices and the transmitted messages, and their optimality in this setting. The relay-to-destination links are assumed to be out-of-band with finite capacity. Two models are investigated: the multiple access relay channel (MARC) and the interference relay channel (IFRC). For t…
In this paper we introduce the two-user asynchronous cognitive multiple access channel (ACMAC). This channel model includes two transmitters, an uninformed one, and an informed one which knows prior to the beginning of a transmission the message which the uninformed transmitter is about to send. We assume that the channel from the uninformed transmitter to the receiver suffers a fixed but unknown delay. We further introduce a modified model, referred to as the asynchronous codeword cognitive multiple access channel (ACC-MAC), which differs from the ACMAC in that the informed user knows the sig…
Bosonic channels describe quantum-mechanically many practical communication links such as optical, microwave, and radiofrequency. We investigate the maximum rates for the bosonic multiple access channel (MAC) in the presence of thermal noise added by the environment and when the transmitters utilize Gaussian state inputs. We develop an outer bound for the capacity region for the thermal-noise lossy bosonic MAC. We additionally find that the use of coherent states at the transmitters is capacity-achieving in the limits of high and low mean input photon numbers. Furthermore, we verify that coher…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a new promising technology that is able to manipulate the wireless propagation channel via smart and controllable signal reflection. In this paper, we investigate the capacity region of a multiple access channel (MAC) with two users sending independent messages to an access point (AP), aided by $M$ IRS reflecting elements. We consider two practical IRS deployment strategies that lead to different user-AP effective channels, namely, the distributed deployment where the $M$ reflecting elements form two IRSs, each deployed in the vicinity of one user, versu…
