Towards an information theory of large networks: an achievable rate region

We study communication networks of arbitrary size and topology under a general vector discrete memoryless channel (V-DMC). We propose an information-theoretic constructive scheme for obtaining an achievable rate region in such networks. Many well-known capacity-defining achievable rate regions can be derived as special cases of the proposed scheme; a few such examples are: degraded and reversely-degraded relay channels, Gaussian multiple access channel, and Gaussian broadcast channel. Applying the proposed scheme to a specific wireless network of n nodes located in a region of unit area, we show that a transport capacity of O(n) bit-meters/s is feasible