Nested Lattice Codes for Gaussian Relay Networks with Interference

Abstract: In this paper, a class of relay networks is considered. We assume that, at a node, outgoing channels to its neighbors are orthogonal, while incoming signals from neighbors can interfere with each other. We are interested in the multicast capacity of these networks. As a subclass, we first focus on Gaussian relay networks with interference and find an achievable rate using a lattice coding scheme. It is shown that there is a constant gap between our achievable rate and the information theoretic cut-set bound. This is similar to the recent result by Avestimehr, Diggavi, and Tse, who showed such an approximate characterization of the capacity of general Gaussian relay networks. However, our achievability uses a structured code instead of a random one. Using the same idea used in the Gaussian case, we also consider linear finite-field symmetric networks with interference and characterize the capacity using a linear coding scheme.