Hierarchical Successive Group Decoding Achieves Capacity in the Multiple Access Channel With General Message Sets

Abstract

We establish that the capacity regions of the discrete memoryless and vector Gaussian multiple access channels with general message sets are achievable with hierarchical successive group decoding, where groups of messages are successively decoded in accordance with the following rule: for each pair of messages known to nested sets of transmitters, the message known to more transmitters is decoded prior to—and not jointly with—the message known to fewer transmitters. This conclusion requires neither rate-splitting nor time-sharing, and is agnostic to whether or not the messages were encoded dependently. For instance, with private messages, hierarchical successive group decoding includes jointly decoding all messages at once, while for degraded messages, it is successive decoding in only one order. A consequence of our main result is that the capacity region of the multiple access channel with general message sets is achievable by time-sharing between only those successive decoding vertices whose decoding order respects the rule described as earlier.