The Arbitrarily Varying Multiple-Access Channel with Conferencing Encoders

Abstract: We derive the capacity region of arbitrarily varying multiple-access channels with conferencing encoders for both deterministic and random coding. For a complete description it is sufficient that one conferencing capacity is positive. We obtain a dichotomy: either the channel's deterministic capacity region is zero or it equals the two-dimensional random coding region. We determine exactly when either case holds. We also discuss the benefits of conferencing. We give the example of an AV-MAC which does not achieve any non-zero rate pair without encoder cooperation, but the two-dimensional random coding capacity region if conferencing is possible. Unlike compound multiple-access channels, arbitrarily varying multiple-access channels may exhibit a discontinuous increase of the capacity region when conferencing in at least one direction is enabled.