Potential performance of PLC systems composed of several communication links

We consider data transmission over a bus system composed of several communication links. All users of the system simultaneously receive transmitted signals with different reliabilities depending on their distance from the sender. Two possible ways of organizing communication are analyzed. The first algorithm includes transmission in a few steps, where each step is devoted to a reliable delivery of the message from one intermediate user to another one. All other users exclude themselves from the system for this step. The second algorithm assumes that all users of the system are active all the time, and they receive side information from communication of intermediate users, which allows them to reduce uncertainty about the original message. Lower bounds on the time needed to deliver a message over the system that follow from the capacity arguments for both methods are given. These bounds are illustrated by numerical examples.