Multiple User Information Theory Renata Goldman

Spring 2007/08 328938527

CRITICAL SUMMARY OF THE PAPER: "THE DISCRETE MEMORYLESS

MULTIPLE-ACCESS CHANNEL WITH CRIBBING ENCODERS" BY FRANS
M. J. WILLEMS AND EDWARD C. VAN DER MEULEN- IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION THEORY, MAY 1985

SUBMITTED BY: RENATA GOLDMAN (328938527)

The following work consists of a critical summary of the paper "The Discrete
Memoryless Multiple-Access Channel with Cribbing Encoders". Its contents have
been divided into three sections: paper summary, technical aspects and relation
to previous work, motivation and innovations. Following the last section is offered
a list of references used other than the paper itself.

PAPER SUMMARY

The article "The Discrete Memoryless Multiple-Access Channel with Cribbing

Encoders" focuses on describing the capacity region for a communications system
with two independent discrete memoryless sources, two transmitters and one
receiver, namely a discrete memoryless multiple-access scenario (DM-MAC),
where one or both transmitters may crib from the other when coding its message.

The authors evaluate all causal situations in witch one transmitter may learn
some or all of the other transmitter's input to the channel and use this
information, when coding, to improve the overall transmission rate of the system,
allowing for a larger range of achievable rates (capacity region).

The concept of cribbing encoders may be extended to a situation where one of

the transmitters is cognitive and thus cribs from the other in orther to improve it’s
own transmition.

At each transmitter the encoder receives the message delivered to him and
generates a mapping of it by and encoding function in the usual way. The
codewords resulting from this mapping have length N and are transmitted in

blocks of the same length. At the nth transmission of a given block, n = 1L N , the
following cases are analyzed:

I. neither encoder learns anything from the other – in this case there is no
cribbing;
II. encoder 2 learns from cribbing, the previous data emitted from encoder
1, up to transmission n − 1 ;

1
Multiple User Information Theory Renata Goldman
Spring 2007/08 328938527

III. encoder 2 learns the previous transmissions emitted as well as the next
channel input to be sent from encoder 1;
IV. encoder 2 cribs and learns encoder 1's whole codeword (this case has
been presented in [1] as the MAC situation with two input users and
correlated encoder outputs);
V. both encoders crib from each other simultaneously and learn their inputs
to the channel, up to transmition n −1;
VI. encoder 1 learns the data emitted from encoder 2 up to transmission
n − 1 , while encoder 2 learns the previous transmissions emitted as well
as the nth channel input to be sent from encoder 1.

Clearly, the roles of encoders 1 and 2 may be interchanged without significant

impact to the basic results. Since case I is simply the classical DM-MAC situation,
for witch the capacity region was already determined by previous work in [2], [3]
– and which was studied throughout the course of Multiple User Information
Theory –, the paper concentrates in investigating the remaining cases.

Throughout the article, an interesting technique is applied in the proof of the

achievability of the capacity regions for most of the situations analyzed. The
proposed scheme is a combination of superposition block Markov encoding
(SBME) and backward decoding, with the innovation of allowing for simultaneous
instead of “step-by-step” decoding. These methods will be discussed further in
the section about the technical aspects of the paper.

Also, within the evaluated situations, there are two cases (III and VI) that may
be compared to the channel with side information at the transmitter. In these
cases, a method similar to the "Shannon's strategies" – presented in [4] and also
studied throughout the course – is used in the achievability proof.

The achievability proofs in this paper are given in terms of Є-typical sets, as
described in [5], as it is customary in vast Information Theory literature. For the
converses, the author's results are based on a lemma which follows directly from
Fano's inequality. Both Є-typical sets and Fano's inequality where studied in the
basic course on Information Theory and won't be discussed further in this
assignment.

Another important result presented by the authors is the fact that in situations
III, IV and VI the capacity region achieves parts of the total cooperation line,
which is described in [1] and was also studied throughout the course. This result
grants that some rate pair from the situation where both encoders cooperate fully
may be achieved even though cooperation is only partial.

2
Multiple User Information Theory Renata Goldman
Spring 2007/08 328938527

It is important to note that the results presented in the paper assume that the
mapping applied by encoders as well as the decoding function are deterministic,
but the authors investigate the case where encoders and decoder may be ruled
by nondeterministic functions and conclude that it doesn't improve upon the
capacity region found for the deterministic situation.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

To begin the discussion on the technical aspects of the article "The Discrete
Memoryless Multiple-Access Channel with Cribbing Encoders" one must describe
the communication system in question, namely a DM-MAC with two encoders and
one decoder.

RELATION TO PREVIOUS WORK, MOTIVATION AND INNOVATIONS

REFERENCES

[1] E. C. van der Meulen, “A survey of multi-way channels in information theory:

1961-1976,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. IT-23, pp. l-37, Jan. 1977.
[2] R. Ahlswede, “Multi-way communication channels,” in Proc. 2d Int. Symp.
Information Theory, Tsahkadsor. Armenian S.S.R.. 1971. pp. 23-52
[3] R. Ahlswede, “The capacity region of a channel with two senders and two
receivers,” Ann. Prob., vol. 2, pp. 805-814, Oct. 1974.
[4] C. E. Shannon, “Channels with side information at the transmitter,” IBM J.
Res. Develop., vol. 2, pp. 289-293, Oct. 1958.
[5] A. El Gamal and T. M. Cover, “Multiple user information theory,” in Proc.
IEEE, vol. 68, pp. 1466-1483, Dec. 1980.
[6] C. E. Shannon, “Two-way communication channels,” in Proc. 4th Berkeley
Sym~. Math. Statist. and Prob. vol. 1. VD. 611-644.1961.
[7] C. Zeng, F. Kuhlmann, and A. Buzo, “Achievability proof of some multiuser
channel coding theorems using backward decoding,” IEEE Trans. Inform.
Theory, vol. 35, pp. 1160–1165, Nov. 1989.
[8] Class notes from " Multiple User Information Theory" – spring 2007/08