Cooperative relay broadcast channels

The capacity regions are investigated for two relay broadcast channels (RBCs), where relay links are incorporated into two-user broadcast channels to support user cooperation. In the first channel, the partially cooperative RBC, only one user in the system acts as a relay. An achievable rate region is derived based on the relay using the decode-and-forward scheme. An outer bound on the capacity region is derived and is shown to be tighter than the cut-set bound. For the special case where the partially cooperative RBC is degraded, the achievable rate region is shown to be the capacity region. Two Gaussian cases of the partially cooperative RBC are studied. For the system where the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) term at one receiver is a degraded version of the other, which we refer to as the D-AWGN partially cooperative RBC, the capacity region is established. For the system where the AWGN term at one receiver is independent of the other, which we refer to as the AWGN partially cooperative RBC, inner and outer bounds on the capacity region are derived and are shown to be close. Furthermore, it is shown that feedback does not increase the capacity region for the degraded partially cooperative RBC, but that it improves the capacity region for the nondegraded version. In particular, feedback improves the capacity region for the AWGN partially cooperative RBC. In the second channel model being studied in the paper, the fully cooperative RBC, both users can act as relay nodes. All the results for the partially cooperative RBC are correspondingly generalized to the fully cooperative RBC. In particular, capacity regions are established for the degraded and D-AWGN fully cooperative RBCs. The capacity region is also established for the fully cooperative RBC with feedback. It is further shown that the AWGN fully cooperative RBC has a larger achievable rate region than its partially cooperative counterpart. The results illustrate that relaying and user cooperation are powerful techniques for improving the capacity of broadcast channels.