An achievable rate for the multiple level relay channel

This paper proposes a new coding scheme and proved a new achievable rate formula for the Gaussian case. The scheme is simpler and avoids some inconvenient techniques (e.g., the Slepian-Wolf partitioning), in giving the same achievable rate for the single relay case. More importantly, this new coding scheme is easier to extend to the multiple level relay case, and generally achieves higher rates. Here we present the results for the discrete memoryless case. The paper also goes on to obtain the capacity of some relay channels under fading, which is the first significant capacity result for such channels, and one, which may possibly constitute a breakthrough in the field.