Broadcast Channels: Some Recent Developments and Open Problems

Abstract

In this paper we consider some recent developments and open problems on broadcast channels. In particular we consider general discrete memoryless broadcast channel with two information sources. For the case where the two sources are independent we define a rate region R and show that arbitrarily reliable transmission of information over a general broadcast channel may be achieved with suitable coding at all rates in R. For the special case of degraded broadcast channels, R reduces to a previously known expression for the capacity region. R is calculated for a nondegradable broadcast channel which shows that previously known achievable rate regions can be substantially improved upon. We also define an achievable rate region for the case of dependent information sources. Finally, some open problems are discussed.