Comments on Cut-Set Bounds on Network Function Computation

A function computation problem over a directed acyclic network has been considered in the literature, where a sink node is required to compute a target function correctly with the inputs arbitrarily generated at multiple source nodes. The network links are error free but capacity limited, and the intermediate nodes perform network coding. The computing rate of a network code is the average number of times that the target function is computed for one use of the network, i.e., each link in the network is used at most once. In the existing papers, two cut-set bounds were proposed on the computing rate. However, we in this paper show that these bounds are not valid for general network function computation problems. We analyze the reason of the invalidity and propose a general cut-set bound by using a new equivalence relation associated with the inputs of the target function. Moreover, some results in the existing papers were proved by applying the invalid upper bound. We also justify the validity of these results.