For general memoryless systems, the typical information theoretic solution - when exists - has a single-letter form. This reflects the fact that optimum performance can be approached by a random code (or a random binning scheme), generated using inde
pendent and identically distributed copies of some single-letter distribution. Is that the form of the solution of any (information theoretic) problem? In fact, some counter examples are known. The most famous is the two help one problem: Korner and Marton showed that if we want to decode the modulo-two sum of two binary sources from their independent encodings, then linear coding is better than random coding. In this paper we provide another counter example, the doubly-dirty multiple access channel (MAC). Like the Korner-Marton problem, this is a multi-terminal scenario where side information is distributed among several terminals; each transmitter knows part of the channel interference but the receiver is not aware of any part of it. We give an explicit solution for the capacity region of a binary version of the doubly-dirty MAC, demonstrate how the capacity region can be approached using a linear coding scheme, and prove that the best known single-letter region is strictly contained in it. We also state a conjecture regarding a similar rate loss of single letter characterization in the Gaussian case.
