Stability of Scheduled Multi-access Communication over Quasi-static Flat Fading Channels with Random Coding and Joint Maximum Likelihood Decoding

We consider stability of scheduled multiaccess message communication with random coding and joint maximum-likehood decoding of messages. The framework we consider here models both the random message arrivals and the subsequent reliable communication by suitably combining techniques from queueing theory and information theory. The number of messages that may be scheduled for simultaneous transmission is limited to a given maximum value, and the channels from transmitters to receiver are quasi-static, flat, and have independent fades. Requests for message transmissions are assumed to arrive according to an i.i.d. arrival process. Then, (i) we derive an outer bound to the region of message arrival rate vectors achievable by the class of stationary scheduling policies, (ii) we show for any message arrival rate vector that satisfies the outerbound, that there exists a stationary state-independent policy that results in a stable system for the corresponding message arrival process, and (iii) in the limit of large message lengths, we show that the stability region of message nat arrival rate vectors has information-theoretic capacity region interpretation.