On the Capacity Region of the Parallel Degraded Broadcast Channel With Three Receivers and Three-Degraded Message Sets

We consider a broadcast channel with three receivers and three-degraded message sets, i.e., the transmitter has a common message intended for all three receivers, a message intended for receivers 2 and 3, and a private message intended only for receiver 3. The messages are transmitted over a family of parallel degraded broadcast channels. In the most general case, the broadcast channel consists of the product of six parallel degraded broadcast channels, each with a different order of degradedness. We first consider an achievable rate region of Nair and El Gamal, by appropriately choosing independent input random variables and auxiliary random variables for each subchannel. We then show that the achievable rate region attains the capacity region for two different classes of such broadcast channels, one consisting of the product of five parallel degraded broadcast channels and another consisting of the product of three parallel degraded broadcast channels. To accomplish this, we make use of an information-theoretic inequality that may be proven using the Csiszar-sum identity. Next, we extend the result to the Gaussian case. We consider the aligned Gaussian MIMO broadcast channel consisting of the product of six parallel degraded Gaussian broadcast channels, where the Gaussian noise vectors for each of the users in each of the subchannels follow a degradedness order, i.e., the noise covariance matrices may be ordered in a positive semi-definite sense. We show that the Nair–El Gamal achievable rate region considered in this paper is maximized by Gaussian inputs. To prove that Gaussian inputs are optimal, we prove an extremal entropy inequality employing a new method recently introduced by Geng and Nair to prove the capacity region of the two-user Gaussian MIMO broadcast channel with common and private messages.