Worst-Case Additive Noise in Wireless Networks

A classical result in information theory states that the Gaussian noise is the worst-case additive noise in point-to-point channels, meaning that, for a fixed noise variance, the Gaussian noise minimizes the capacity of an additive noise channel. In this paper, we significantly generalize this result and show that the Gaussian noise is also the worst-case additive noise in wireless networks with additive noises that are independent from the transmit signals. More specifically, we show that if we fix the noise variance at each node, then the capacity region with Gaussian noises is a subset of the capacity region with any other set of noise distributions. We prove this result by showing that a coding scheme that achieves a given set of rates on a network with Gaussian additive noises can be used to construct a coding scheme that achieves the same set of rates on a network that has the same topology and traffic demands, but with non-Gaussian additive noises.