An information-spectrum approach to the capacity region of the interference channel

In this paper, a general formula for the capacity region of a general interference channel with two pairs of users is derived, which reveals that the capacity region is the union of a family of rectangles. In the region, each rectangle is determined by a pair of spectral inf-mutual information rates. The presented formula provides us with useful insights into the interference channels in spite of the difficulty of computing it. Specially, when the inputs are discrete, ergodic Markov processes and the channel is stationary memoryless, the formula can be evaluated by the BCJR (Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv) algorithm. Also the formula suggests that considering the structure of the interference processes contributes to obtaining tighter inner bounds than the simplest one (obtained by treating the interference as noise). This is verified numerically by calculating the mutual information rates for Gaussian interference channels with embedded convolutional codes. Moreover, we present a coding scheme to approach the theoretical achievable rate pairs. Numerical results show that the decoding gains can be achieved by considering the structure of the interference.