On noisy network coding for a Gaussian relay chain network with correlated noises

Noisy network coding, which elegantly combines the conventional compress-and-forward relaying strategy and ideas from network coding, has recently drawn much attention for its simplicity and optimality in achieving to within constant gap of the capacity of the multisource multicast Gaussian network. The constant-gap result, however, applies only to Gaussian relay networks with independent noises. This paper investigates the application of noisy network coding to networks with correlated noises. By focusing on a four-node Gaussian relay chain network with a particular noise correlation structure, it is shown that noisy network coding can no longer achieve to within constant gap to capacity with the choice of Gaussian inputs and Gaussian quantization. The cut-set bound of the relay chain network in this particular case, however, can be achieved to within half a bit by a simple concatenation of a correlation-aware noisy network coding strategy and a decode-and-forward scheme.