On the capacity of the half-duplex MIMO Gaussian diamond channel

In this paper, we analyze the 2-relay multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian diamond channel. We show that a multihopping decode-and-forward with multiple access (MDF-MAC) protocol achieves rates within a constant gap from capacity when a channel parameter Δ is greater than zero. We also identify the transmit covariance matrices to be used by each relay in the multiple-access (MAC) state of the MDF-MAC protocol. As done for the single-antenna 2-relay Gaussian diamond channel, the channel parameter Δ is defined to be the difference between the product of the capacities of the links from the source to the two relays and the product of the capacities of the links from the two relays to the destination.