Cooperative Networks with Channel Uncertainty

In this thesis, cooperative networks are studied under the assumption that the source is uncertain about the channel in operation. In the first chapter, cooperative strategies are developed for simultaneous relay channels (SRC) which consist of a set of two single relay channels out of which the channel in operation is chosen. This is equivalent to the broadcast relay channel (BRC). Bounds on the capacity region of the general BRC with two helper relays are derived. Capacity results are obtained for specific cases of semi-degraded and degraded Gaussian simultaneous relay channels. In the second chapter, the composite relay channel is considered where the channel is randomly drawn from a set of conditional distributions according to a given distribution. The transmission rate is fixed regardless of the current channel and the asymptotic error probability (EP) is characterized. A novel selective coding strategy (SCS) is introduced which enables relays to select –based on their channel measurement– the best coding scheme between Compress-and-Forward (CF) and Decode-and-Forward (DF). Generalized Noisy Network Coding theorems are shown for the case of unicast general networks where the relays use either DF or CF scheme. In the third chapter, the asymptotic behavior of EP is studied for composite multiterminal networks. The asymptotic spectrum of EP is introduced as a novel performance measure for composite networks. It is shown that every code with rate outside cut-set bound, yields EP equal to one and for the networks satisfying strong converse condition, the asymptotic spectrum of EP coincides with the outage probability.