Sum capacity of multi-source linear finite-field relay networks with fading

We study a fading linear finite-field relay network having multiple source-destination pairs. Because of the interference created by different unicast sessions, the problem of finding its capacity region is in general difficult. We observe that, since channels are time-varying, relays can deliver their received signals by waiting for appropriate channel realizations such that the destinations can decode their messages without interference. We propose a block Markov encoding and relaying scheme that exploits such channel variations. By deriving a general cut-set upper bound and an achievable rate region, we characterize the sum capacity for some classes of channel distributions and network topologies. For example, when the channels are uniformly distributed, the sum capacity is given by the minimum average rank of the channel matrices constructed by all cuts that separate the entire sources and destinations. We also describe other cases where the capacity is characterized.
Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, to appear in proc. IEEE ISIT, June 2009