An Information-Spectrum Approach to the Capacity Region of General Interference Channel

Abstract

This paper is concerned with general interference channels characterized by a sequence of transition (conditional) probabilities. We present a general formula for the capacity region of the interference channel with two pairs of users. The formula shows that the capacity region is the union of a family of rectangles, where each rectangle is determined by a pair of spectral inf-mutual information rates. Although the presented formula is usually difficult to compute, it provides us useful insights into the interference channels. For example, the formula suggests us that the simplest inner bounds (obtained by treating the interference as noise) could be improved by taking into account the structure of the interference processes. This is verified numerically by computing the mutual information rates for Gaussian interference channels with embedded convolutional codes.