Outer bounds on the capacity of Gaussian interference channels

Two outer bounds on the capacity region of the two-user Gaussian interference channel (IFC) are derived. The idea of the first bound is to let a genie give each receiver just enough information to decode both messages. This bound unifies and improves the best known outer bounds of Sato and Carleial. Furthermore, the bound extends to discrete memoryless IFCs and is shown to be equivalent to another bound of Carleial. The second bound follows directly from existing results of Costa and Sato and possesses certain optimality properties for weak interference.