Capacity of the State-Dependent Half-Duplex Relay Channel Without Source-Destination Link

TL;DR

This paper determines the capacity of a state-dependent half-duplex relay channel without a direct source-destination link, revealing an additional degree of freedom due to the relay's adaptive transmission and reception capabilities.

Contribution

It derives the capacity of the channel and introduces a buffer-aided relaying protocol with adaptive link selection, highlighting a previously overlooked degree of freedom.

Findings

Capacity characterized for the state-dependent half-duplex relay channel

Achievability proven using a buffer-aided adaptive protocol

Additional degree of freedom identified in relay operation

Abstract

We derive the capacity of the state-dependent half-duplex relay channel without source-destination link. The output of the state-dependent half-duplex relay channel depends on the randomly varying channel states of the source-relay and relay-destination links, which are known causally at all three nodes. For this channel, we prove a converse and show the achievability of the capacity based on a buffer-aided relaying protocol with adaptive link selection. This protocol chooses in each times slot one codeword to be transmitted over either the source-relay or the relay-destination channel depending on the channel states. Our proof of the converse reveals that state-dependent half-duplex relay networks offer one additional degree of freedom which has been previously overlooked. Namely, the freedom of the half-duplex relay to choose when to receive and when to transmit.