Capacity of Wireless Networks within o(log(SNR)) - the Impact of Relays, Feedback, Cooperation and Full-Duplex Operation

Abstract

Recent work has characterized the sum capacity of time-varying/frequency-selective wireless interference networks and $X$ networks within $o(\log({SNR}))$, i.e., with an accuracy approaching 100% at high SNR (signal to noise power ratio). In this paper, we seek similar capacity characterizations for wireless networks with relays, feedback, full duplex operation, and transmitter/receiver cooperation through noisy channels. First, we consider a network with $S$ source nodes, $R$ relay nodes and $D$ destination nodes with random time-varying/frequency-selective channel coefficients and global channel knowledge at all nodes. We allow full-duplex operation at all nodes, as well as causal noise-free feedback of all received signals to all source and relay nodes. The sum capacity of this network is characterized as $\frac{SD}{S+D-1}\log({SNR})+o(\log({SNR}))$. The implication of the result is that the capacity benefits of relays, causal feedback, transmitter/receiver cooperation through physical channels and full duplex operation become a negligible fraction of the network capacity at high SNR. Some exceptions to this result are also pointed out in the paper. Second, we consider a network with $K$ full duplex nodes with an independent message from every node to every other node in the network. We find that the sum capacity of this network is bounded below by $\frac{K(K-1)}{2K-2}+o(\log({SNR}))$ and bounded above by $\frac{K(K-1)}{2K-3}+o(\log({SNR}))$.