Simultaneous Computation and Communication over MAC

We study communication over a Gaussian multiple-access channel (MAC) with two types of transmitters: Digital transmitters hold a message from a discrete set that needs to be communicated to the receiver. Analog transmitters hold sequences of analog values, and some function of these distributed values (but not the values themselves) need to be conveyed to the receiver. For the digital messages, it is required that they can be decoded error free at the receiver with high probability while the recovered analog function values have to satisfy a fidelity criterion such as an upper bound on mean squared error (MSE) or a certain maximum error with a given confidence. For the case in which the computed function for the analog transmitters is a sum of values in [-1, 1], we derive inner and outer bounds for the tradeoff of digital and analog rates of communication under peak and average power constraints for digital transmitters and a peak power constraint for analog transmitters. We then extend the achievability part of our result to a larger class of functions that includes all linear, but also some non-linear functions.