A General Formula for Compound Channel Capacity

A general formula, for the capacity of arbitrary compound channels with the receiver channel state information, is obtained using the information density approach. No assumptions of ergodicity, stationarity, or information stability are made and the channel state set is arbitrary. A direct (constructive) proof is given. To prove achievability, we generalize Feinstein Lemma to the compound channel setting, and to prove converse, we generalize Verdu-Han Lemma to the same compound setting. A notion of a uniform compound channel is introduced and the general formula is shown to reduce to the familiar sup-inf expression for such channels. As a by-product, the arbitrary varying channel capacity is established under maximum error probability and deterministic coding. Conditions are established under which the worst-case and compound channel capacities are equal, so that the full channel state information at the transmitter brings in no advantage. The compound inf-information rate plays a prominent role in the general formula. Its properties are studied and a link between the information-unstable and information-stable regimes of a compound channel is established. The results are extended to include ε-capacity of compound channels. Sufficient and necessary conditions for the strong converse to hold are given.