Energy Efficiency of Unsourced Random Access Over the Binary-Input Gaussian Channel

We investigate the fundamental limits of the unsourced random access over the binary-input Gaussian channel. By fundamental limits, we mean the minimal energy per bit required to achieve the target per-user probability of error. The original method proposed by Y. Polyanskiy (2017) and based on Gallager’s trick does not work well for binary signaling. We utilize Fano’s method, which is based on the choice of the so-called “good” region. We apply this method for the cases of Gaussian and binary codebooks and obtain two achievability bounds. The first bound is very close to Polyanskiy’s bound but does not lead to any improvement. At the same time, the numerical results show that the bound for the binary case practically coincides with the bound for the Gaussian codebook. Thus, we conclude that energy-efficient schemes using binary modulation do exist.