On the capacity of the half-duplex diamond channel

In this paper, a dual-hop communication system composed of a source S and a destination D connected through two non-interfering half-duplex relays, R
₁
and R
₂
, is considered. In the literature of Information Theory, this configuration is known as the diamond channel. In this setup, four transmission modes are present, namely: 1) S transmits, and R
₁
and R
₂
listen (broadcast mode), 2) S transmits, R
₁
listens, and simultaneously, R
₂
transmits and D listens. 3) S transmits, R
₂
listens, and simultaneously, R
₁
transmits and D listens. 4) R
₁
, R
₂
transmit, and D listens (multiple-access mode). Assuming a constant power constraint for all transmitters, a parameter Δ is defined, which captures some important features of the channel. It is proven that for Δ=0 the capacity of the channel can be attained by successive relaying, i.e, using modes 2 and 3 defined above in a successive manner. This strategy may have an infinite gap from the capacity of the channel when Δ≠0. To achieve rates as close as 0.71 bits to the capacity, it is shown that the cases of Δ >0 and Δ <; 0 should be treated differently. Using new upper bounds based on the dual problem of the linear program associated with the cut-set bounds, it is proven that the successive relaying strategy needs to be enhanced by an additional broadcast mode (mode 1), or multiple access mode (mode 4), for the cases of Δ <; 0 and Δ > 0, respectively. Furthermore, it is established that under average power constraints the aforementioned strategies achieve rates as close as 3.6 bits to the capacity of the channel.