This work identifies the fundamental limits of cache-aided coded multicasting in the presence of the well-known worst-user' bottleneck. This stems from the presence of receiving users with uneven channel capacities, which often forces the rate of transmission of each multicasting message to be reduced to that of the slowest user. This bottleneck, which can be detrimental in general wireless broadcast settings, motivates the analysis of coded caching over a standard Single-Input-Single-Output (SISO) Broadcast Channel (BC) with K cache-aided receivers, each with a generally different channel capacity. For this setting, we design a communication algorithm that is based on superposition coding that capitalizes on the realization that the user with the worst channel may not be the real bottleneck of communication. We then proceed to provide a converse that shows the algorithm to be near optimal, identifying the fundamental limits of this setting within a multiplicative factor of 4. Interestingly, the result reveals that, even if several users are experiencing channels with reduced capacity, the system can achieve the same optimal delivery time that would be achievable if all users enjoyed maximal capacity.
Our work is in the spirit of all the above papers, and it can be seen specifically as an extension of @cite_20 . This reference considered a specific binary topological case, for which it proposed a two-level superposition-based transmission scheme to alleviate the worst-user bottleneck.
@cite_20
1965299092 2952966314 2400872280 2949343062
Selective families, a weaker variant of superimposed codes [KS64, F92, 197, CR96], have been recently used to design Deterministic Distributed Broadcast (DDB) protocols for unknown radio networks (a radio network is said to be unknown when the nodes know nothing about the network but their own label) [CGGPR00, CGOR00]. We first provide a general almost tight lower bound on the size of selective families. Then, by reverting the selective families - DDB protocols connection, we exploit our lower bound to construct a family of “hard” radio networks (i.e. directed graphs). These networks yield an O(n log D) lower bound on the completion time of DDB protocols that is superlinear (in the size n of the network) even for very small maximum eccentricity D of the network, while all the previous lower bounds (e.g. O(D log n) [CGGPR00]) are superlinear only when D is almost linear. On the other hand, the previous upper bounds are all superlinear in n independently of the eccentricity D and the maximum in-degree d of the network. We introduce a broadcast technique that exploits selective families in a new way. Then, by combining selective families of almost optimal size with our new broadcast technique, we obtain an O(Dd log3 n) upper bound that we prove to be almost optimal when d = O(n D). This exponentially improves over the best known upper bound [CGR00) when D, d = O(polylogn). Furthermore, by comparing our deterministic upper bound with the best known randomized one [BGI87] we obtain a new, rather surprising insight into the real gap between deterministic and randomized protocols. It turns out that this gap is exponential (as discovered in [BGI87]), but only when the network has large maximum in-degree (i.e. d = O(na), for some constant a > O). We then look at the multibroadcast problem on unknown radio networks. A similar connection to that between selective families and (single) broadcast also holds between superimposed codes and multibroadcast. We in fact combine a variant of our (single) broadcast technique with superimposed codes of almost optimal size available in literature [EFF85, HS87, I97, CHI99]. This yields a multibroadcast protocol having completion time O(Dd2 log3 n). Finally, in order to determine the limits of our multibroadcast technique, we generalize (and improve) the best known lower bound [CR96] on the size of superimposed codes. A generalization of the Gaussian dirty-paper problem to a multiple access setup is considered. There are two additive interference signals, one known to each transmitter but none to the receiver. The rates achievable using Costa's strategies (i.e. by a random binning scheme induced by Costa's auxiliary random variables) vanish in the limit when the interference signals are strong. In contrast, it is shown that lattice strategies ("lattice precoding") can achieve positive rates independent of the interferences, and in fact in some cases - which depend on the noise variance and power constraints - they are optimal. In particular, lattice strategies are optimal in the limit of high SNR. It is also shown that the gap between the achievable rate region and the capacity region is at most 0.167 bit. Thus, the dirty MAC is another instance of a network setup, like the Korner-Marton modulo-two sum problem, where linear coding is potentially better than random binning. Lattice transmission schemes and conditions for optimality for the asymmetric case, where there is only one interference which is known to one of the users (who serves as a "helper" to the other user), and for the "common interference" case are also derived. In the former case the gap between the helper achievable rate and its capacity is at most 0.085 bit. Lattice codes used under the Compute-and-Forward paradigm suggest an alternative strategy for the standard Gaussian multiple-access channel (MAC): The receiver successively decodes integer linear combinations of the messages until it can invert and recover all messages. In this paper, this strategy is developed and analyzed. For the two-user MAC, it is shown that without time-sharing, the entire capacity region can be attained with a single-user decoder as soon as the signal-to-noise ratios are above @math . A partial analysis is given for more than two users. Lastly the strategy is extended to the so-called dirty MAC where two interfering signals are known non-causally to the two transmitters in a distributed fashion. Our scheme extends the previously known results and gives new achievable rate regions. In this paper, collocated and distributed space-time block codes (DSTBCs) which admit multi-group maximum likelihood (ML) decoding are studied. First the collocated case is considered and the problem of constructing space-time block codes (STBCs) which optimally tradeoff rate and ML decoding complexity is posed. Recently, sufficient conditions for multi-group ML decodability have been provided in the literature and codes meeting these sufficient conditions were called Clifford Unitary Weight (CUW) STBCs. An algebraic framework based on extended Clifford algebras is proposed to study CUW STBCs and using this framework, the optimal tradeoff between rate and ML decoding complexity of CUW STBCs is obtained for few specific cases. Code constructions meeting this tradeoff optimally are also provided. The paper then focuses on multi-group ML decodable DSTBCs for application in synchronous wireless relay networks and three constructions of four-group ML decodable DSTBCs are provided. Finally, the OFDM based Alamouti space-time coded scheme proposed by Li-Xia for a 2 relay asynchronous relay network is extended to a more general transmission scheme that can achieve full asynchronous cooperative diversity for arbitrary number of relays. It is then shown how differential encoding at the source can be combined with the proposed transmission scheme to arrive at a new transmission scheme that can achieve full cooperative diversity in asynchronous wireless relay networks with no channel information and also no timing error knowledge at the destination node. Four-group decodable DSTBCs applicable in the proposed OFDM based transmission scheme are also given.