  A multi-way communication network with three nodes and a relay is considered.
The three nodes in this so-called Y-channel, communicate with each other in a
bi-directional manner via the relay. Studying this setup is important due to
its being an important milestone for characterizing the capacity of larger
networks. A transmit strategy for the Gaussian Y-channel is proposed, which
mimics a previously considered scheme for the deterministic approximation of
the Y-channel. Namely, a scheme which uses nested-lattice codes and lattice
alignment is used, to perform network coding. A new mode of operation is
introduced, named `cyclic communication', which interestingly turns out to be
an important component for achieving the capacity region of the Gaussian
Y-channel within a constant gap.
