Capacity Results for Multicasting Nested Message Sets Over Combination Networks

The problem of multicasting two nested messages is studied over a class of networks known as combination networks. A source multicasts two messages, a common and a private message, to several receivers. A subset of the receivers (called the public receivers) only demand the common message, and the rest of the receivers (called the private receivers) demand both the common and the private message. Three encoding schemes are discussed that employ linear superposition coding, and their optimality is proved in special cases. The standard linear superposition scheme is shown to be optimal for networks with two public receivers and any number of private receivers. When the number of public receivers increases, this scheme stops being optimal. Two improvements are discussed: one using pre-encoding at the source, and one using a block Markov encoding scheme. The rate-regions that are achieved by the two schemes are characterized in terms of feasibility problems. Both inner bounds are shown to be the capacity region for networks with three (or fewer) public and any number of private receivers. Although the inner bounds are not comparable in general, it is shown through an example that the region achieved by the block Markov encoding scheme may strictly include the region achieved by the pre-encoding/linear superposition scheme. Optimality results are founded on the general framework of Balister and Bollobás (2007) for sub-modularity of the entropy function. An equivalent graphical representation is introduced and a lemma is proved that might be of independent interest. Motivated by the connections between combination networks and broadcast channels, a new block Markov encoding scheme is proposed for broadcast channels with two nested messages. The rate-region that is obtained includes the previously known rate-regions. It remains open whether this inclusion is strict.