The sum-capacity is studied for a K-user physically degraded Gaussian multiaccess relay channel (MARC). Decodeand-forward (DF) is shown to achieve the sum-capacity and capacity region for a sub-class of degraded Gaussian MARCs in which the multiaccess link from the sources to the relay is the bottle-neck link. For the remaining sub-class, DF is shown to achieve the K-user sum-capacity when the sources are symmetric, i.e., they transmit with the same transmit power. The optimality of DF is conjectured for the case of asymmetric sources.
Lalitha Sankar, Narayan B. Mandayam, H. Vincent Po