Capacity Region of Multiple Access Channel with States Known Noncausally at One Encoder and Only Strictly Causally at the Other Encoder

We consider a two-user state-dependent multiaccess channel in which the states of the channel are known non-causally to one of the encoders and only strictly causally to the other encoder. Both encoders transmit a common message and, in addition, the encoder that knows the states non-causally transmits an individual message. We find explicit characterizations of the capacity region of this communication model in both discrete memoryless (DM) and memoryless Gaussian cases. In particular the capacity region analysis demonstrates the utility of the knowledge of the states only strictly causally at the encoder that sends only the common message in general. More specifically, in the DM setting we show that such a knowledge is beneficial and increases the capacity region in general. In the Gaussian setting, we show that such a knowledge does not help, and the capacity is same as if the states were completely unknown at the encoder that sends only the common message. The analysis also reveals optimal ways of exploiting the knowledge of the state only strictly causally at the encoder that sends only the common message when such a knowledge is beneficial. The encoders collaborate to convey to the decoder a lossy version of the state, in addition to transmitting the information messages through a generalized Gel'fand-Pinsker binning. Particularly important in this problem are the questions of 1) optimal ways of performing the state compression and 2) whether or not the compression indices should be decoded uniquely. We show that both compression `a-la noisy network coding, i.e., with no binning and non-unique decoding, and compression using Wyner-Ziv binning with backward decoding and non-unique or unique decoding are optimal.