A Deterministic Approach to Wireless Relay Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a deterministic channel model for wireless relay networks, providing an exact capacity characterization for single-source single-destination setups and connecting it to Gaussian models with near-optimal schemes.

Contribution

It presents a novel deterministic model that generalizes the max-flow min-cut theorem to wireless networks and links it to practical Gaussian channel schemes.

Findings

Exact capacity characterization for single-source relay networks

Capacity-achieving schemes within 1-2 bits of cut-set bounds in Gaussian models

Demonstrates the deterministic model's relevance to real wireless channels

Abstract

We present a deterministic channel model which captures several key features of multiuser wireless communication. We consider a model for a wireless network with nodes connected by such deterministic channels, and present an exact characterization of the end-to-end capacity when there is a single source and a single destination and an arbitrary number of relay nodes. This result is a natural generalization of the max-flow min-cut theorem for wireline networks. Finally to demonstrate the connections between deterministic model and Gaussian model, we look at two examples: the single-relay channel and the diamond network. We show that in each of these two examples, the capacity-achieving scheme in the corresponding deterministic model naturally suggests a scheme in the Gaussian model that is within 1 bit and 2 bit respectively from cut-set upper bound, for all values of the channel gains. This is the first part of a two-part paper; the sequel [1] will focus on the proof of the max-flow min-cut theorem of a class of deterministic networks of which our model is a special case.