First- and second-order coding theorems for mixed memoryless channels with general mixture

This paper studies the first- and second-order maximum achievable rates of codes with/without cost constraints for general mixed channels whose channel law is characterized by a mixture of uncountably many stationary and memoryless discrete channels. These channels are referred to as general mixed memoryless channels and include mixed memoryless channels of finitely or countably many memoryless channels as a special case. For general mixed memoryless channels, the first-order coding theorem which gives a formula for the ε-capacity is established, and then a direct part of the second-order coding theorem is provided. A subclass of general mixed memoryless channels whose component channels can be ordered according to their capacity is introduced, and the first- and second-order coding theorems are established. It is shown that the established formulas reduce to several known formulas for restricted scenarios.