In this work we focus on the general relay channel. We investigate the application of estimate-and-forward (EAF) to different scenarios. Specifically, we consider assignments of the auxiliary random variables that always satisfy the feasibility constraints. We first consider the multiple relay channel and obtain an achievable rate without decoding at the relays. We demonstrate the benefits of this result via an explicit discrete memoryless multiple relay scenario where multi-relay EAF is superior to multi-relay decode-and-forward (DAF). We then consider the Gaussian relay channel with coded modulation, where we show that a three-level quantization outperforms the Gaussian quantization commonly used to evaluate the achievable rates in this scenario. Finally we consider the cooperative general broadcast scenario with a multi-step conference. We apply estimate-and-forward to obtain a general multi-step achievable rate region. We then give an explicit assignment of the auxiliary random variables, and use this result to obtain an explicit expression for the single common message broadcast scenario with a two-step conference.
We develop communication strategies for the rate-constrained interactive decoding of a message broadcast to a group of interested users. This situation diers from the relay channel in that all users are interested in the transmitted message, and from the broadcast channel because no user can decode on its own. We focus on two-user scenarios, and describe a baseline strategy that uses ideas of coding with decoder side information. One user acts initially as a relay for the other. That other user then decodes the message and sends back random parity bits, enabling the first user to decode. We show how to improve on this scheme’s performance through a conversation consisting of multiple rounds of discussion. While there are now more messages, each message is shorter, lowering the overall rate of the conversation. Such multi-round conversations can be more ecient because earlier messages serve as side information known at both encoder and decoder. We illustrate these ideas for binary erasure channels. We show that multi-round conversations can decode using less overall rate than is possible with the single-round scheme. We consider the problem of communicating over the general discrete memoryless broadcast channel (DMBC) with partially cooperating receivers. In our setup, receivers are able to exchange messages over noiseless conference links of finite capacities, prior to decoding the messages sent from the transmitter. In this paper, we formulate the general problem of broadcast with cooperation. We first find the capacity region for the case where the BC is physically degraded. Then, we give achievability results for the general broadcast channel, for both the two independent messages case and the single common message case 