This paper considers a general Gaussian relay network where a source transmits a message to a destination with the help of N half-duplex relays. It proves that the information theoretic cut-set upper bound to the capacity can be achieved to within 2:021(N +2) bits with noisy network coding, thereby reducing the previously known gap. Further improved gap results are presented for more structured networks like diamond networks. It is then shown that the generalized Degrees-of-Freedom of a general Gaussian half-duplex relay network is the solution of a linear program, where the coefficients of the linear inequality constraints are proved to be the solution of several linear programs, known in graph theory as the assignment problem, for which efficient numerical algorithms exist. The optimal schedule, that is, the optimal value of the 2^N possible transmit-receive configurations states for the relays, is investigated and known results for diamond networks are extended to general relay networks. It is shown, for the case of 2 relays, that only 3 out of the 4 possible states have strictly positive probability. Extensive experimental results show that, for a general N-relay network with N<9, the optimal schedule has at most N +1 states with strictly positive probability. As an extension of a conjecture presented for diamond networks, it is conjectured that this result holds for any HD relay network and any number of relays. Finally, a 2-relay network is studied to determine the channel conditions under which selecting the best relay is not optimal, and to highlight the nature of the rate gain due to multiple relays.
@cite_26: We study the half-duplex multiple-relay channel (HD-MRC) where every node can either transmit or listen but cannot do both at the same time. We obtain a capacity upper bound based on a max-flow min-cut argument and achievable transmission rates based on the decode-forward (DF) coding strategy, for both the discrete memoryless HD-MRC and the phase-fading HD-MRC. We discover that both the upper bound and the achievable rates are functions of the transmit listen state (a description of which nodes transmit and which receive). More precisely, they are functions of the time fraction of the different states, which we term a schedule. We formulate the optimal scheduling problem to find an optimal schedule that maximizes the DF rate. The optimal scheduling problem turns out to be a maximin optimization, for which we propose an algorithmic solution. We demonstrate our approach on a four-node multiple-relay channel, obtaining closed-form solutions in certain scenarios. Furthermore, we show that for the received signal-to-noise ratio degraded phase-fading HD-MRC, the optimal scheduling problem can be simplified to a max optimization.
Relay networks were also studied in @cite_26 , where an iterative algorithm was proposed to determine the optimal fraction of time each HD relay transmits receives by using DF under deterministic switching mechanism.