Resource Allocation for Wireless Fading Relay Channels: Max-Min Solution

Resource allocation is investigated for fading relay channels under separate power constraints at the source and relay nodes. As a basic information-theoretic model for fading relay channels, the parallel relay channel is first studied, which consists of multiple independent three-terminal relay channels as subchannels. Lower and upper bounds on the capacity are derived, and are shown to match, and thus establish the capacity for the parallel relay channel with degraded subchannels. This capacity theorem is further demonstrated via the Gaussian parallel relay channel with degraded subchannels, for which the synchronized and asynchronized capacities are obtained. The capacity-achieving power allocation at the source and relay nodes among the subchannels is partially characterized for the synchronized case and fully characterized for the asynchronized case. The fading relay channel is then studied, which is based on the three-terminal relay channel with each communication link being corrupted by a multiplicative fading gain coefficient as well as an additive Gaussian noise term. For each link, the fading state information is assumed to be known at both the transmitter and the receiver. The source and relay nodes are allowed to allocate their power adaptively according to the instantaneous channel state information. The source and relay nodes are assumed to be subject to separate power constraints. For both the full-duplex and half-duplex cases, power allocations that maximize the achievable rates are obtained. In the half-duplex case, the power allocation needs to be jointly optimized with the channel resource (time and bandwidth) allocation between the two orthogonal channels over which the relay node transmits and receives. Capacities are established for fading relay channels that satisfy certain conditions.