Capacity Bounds for a Class of Interference Relay Channels

The capacity of a class of interference relay channels (IRCs)-the injective semideterministic IRC where the relay can only observe one of the sources-is investigated. We first derive a novel outer bound and two inner bounds which are based on a careful use of each of the available cooperative strategies together with the adequate interference decoding technique. The outer bound extends Telatar and Tse's work, whereas the inner bounds contain several known results in the literature. Our main result is the characterization of the capacity region of the Gaussian class of IRCs studied within a fixed number of bits per dimension, constant gap. The proof relies on the use of the different cooperative strategies in specific SNR regimes due to their complexity. As a matter of fact, this issue reveals the complex nature of the Gaussian IRC where the combination of a single coding scheme for the Gaussian relay and interference channel may not lead to a good coding scheme for this problem, even when the focus is only on capacity within a constant gap over all possible fading statistics.