Can negligible cooperation increase network reliability?
Parham Noorzad, Michelle Effros, Michael L. Langberg · CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) · 2016
In network cooperation strategies, nodes work together with the aim of increasing transmission rates or reliability. This paper demonstrates that enabling cooperation between the transmitters of a two-user multiple access channel via a cooperation facilitator that has access to both messages, always results in a network whose maximal- and average-error sum-capacities are the same—even when the information shared with the encoders is negligible. Thus, for a multiple access channel whose maximal- and average-error sum-capacities differ, the maximal-error sum-capacity is not continuous with respect to the output edge capacities of the facilitator. This shows that for some networks, sharing even a negligible number of bits per channel use with the encoders can yield a non-negligible benefit.