Multiaccess fading channels - Part II: Delay-limited capacities

In multiaccess wireless systems, dynamic allocation of resources such as transmit power, bandwidths, and rates is an important means to deal with the time-varying nature of the environment. In this two-part paper, we consider the problem of optimal resource allocation from an information-theoretic point of view. We focus on the multiaccess fading channel with Gaussian noise, and define two notions of capacity depending on whether the traffic is delay-sensitive or not, In Part I, we have analyzed the throughput capacity region which characterizes the long-term achievable rates through the time-varying channel. However, the delay experienced depends on how fast the channel varies. In the present paper, Part II, we introduce a notion of delay-limited capacity which is the maximum rate achievable with delay independent of how slow the fading is. We characterize the delay-limited capacity region of the multiaccess fading channel and the associated optimal resource allocation schemes. We show that successive decoding is optimal, and the optimal decoding order and power allocation can be found explicitly as a function of the fading states; this is a consequence of an underlying polymatroid structure that we exploit.