Multi-Modal Broadcast Packet Erasure Channels: Capacity with Non-Stationary Controllable Statistics
Journal
IEEE Transactions on Communications
Start Page
1
End Page
1
ISSN
0090-6778
1558-0857
Date Issued
2025-11-21
Author(s)
Vahid, Alireza
Abstract
In several wireless settings, channel statistics may be controllable and/or predictable. For instance, next generation reconfigurable antennas have the potential to control channel statistics. Further, the known trajectory and operation protocol of communication satellites results in networks with predictable statistics. These settings give rise to a non-stationary model for which the fundamentals are largely unknown. We consider the canonical two-user broadcast packet erasure channel in which channel statistics vary at a priori known points in time. We consider a multi-modal setting with two non-transient modes (whose lengths scale linearly with the blocklength) and an arbitrary number of transient modes. We provide a new set of outerbounds on the capacity region of this problem when the encoder has access to causal feedback. The results reveal the significant role of the non-transient mode with higher erasure probability both on the outer and the inner bounds. We show the outerbounds are achievable in non-trivial regimes, characterizing the capacity region for a wide range of parameters. We also discuss the regimes where the inner and outer bounds diverge and analyze the gap between the two. A key finding of this work is the significant gain of inter-modal coding over the separate treating of individual modes.
Subjects
channel morphing
controllable statistics
feedback
Multi-modal channels
non-stationary fading
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Type
journal article