Cooperative Multi-Cell Networks: Impact of Limited-Capacity Backhaul and Inter-Users Links

Cooperative technology is expected to have a great impact on the performance of cellular or, more generally, infrastructure networks. Both multicell processing (cooperation among base stations) and relaying (cooperation at the user level) are currently being investigated. In this presentation, recent results regarding the performance of multicell processing and user cooperation under the assumption of limited-capacity interbase station and inter-user links, respectively, are reviewed. The survey focuses on related results derived for non-fading uplink and downlink channels of simple cellular system models. The analytical treatment, facilitated by these simple setups, enhances the insight into the limitations imposed by limited-capacity constraints on the gains achievable by cooperative techniques

Dynamic Interference Management

A linear interference network is considered. Long-term fluctuations (shadow fading) in the wireless channel can lead to any link being erased with probability p. Each receiver is interested in one unique message that can be available at M transmitters. In a cellular downlink scenario, the case where M=1 reflects the cell association problem, and the case where M>1 reflects the problem of setting up the backhaul links for Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission. In both cases, we analyze Degrees of Freedom (DoF) optimal schemes for the case of no erasures, and propose new schemes with better average DoF performance at high probabilities of erasure. For M=1, we characterize the average per user DoF, and identify the optimal assignment of messages to transmitters at each value of p. For general values of M, we show that there is no strategy for assigning messages to transmitters in large networks that is optimal for all values of p.Comment: Shorter version is in proceedings of the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Nov. 201

Cellular Interference Alignment

Interference alignment promises that, in Gaussian interference channels, each link can support half of a degree of freedom (DoF) per pair of transmit-receive antennas. However, in general, this result requires to precode the data bearing signals over a signal space of asymptotically large diversity, e.g., over an infinite number of dimensions for time-frequency varying fading channels, or over an infinite number of rationally independent signal levels, in the case of time-frequency invariant channels. In this work we consider a wireless cellular system scenario where the promised optimal DoFs are achieved with linear precoding in one-shot (i.e., over a single time-frequency slot). We focus on the uplink of a symmetric cellular system, where each cell is split into three sectors with orthogonal intra-sector multiple access. In our model, interference is "local", i.e., it is due to transmitters in neighboring cells only. We consider a message-passing backhaul network architecture, in which nearby sectors can exchange already decoded messages and propose an alignment solution that can achieve the optimal DoFs. To avoid signaling schemes relying on the strength of interference, we further introduce the notion of \emph{topologically robust} schemes, which are able to guarantee a minimum rate (or DoFs) irrespectively of the strength of the interfering links. Towards this end, we design an alignment scheme which is topologically robust and still achieves the same optimum DoFs

Cognitive Wyner Networks with Clustered Decoding

We study an interference network where equally-numbered transmitters and receivers lie on two parallel lines, each transmitter opposite its intended receiver. We consider two short-range interference models: the "asymmetric network," where the signal sent by each transmitter is interfered only by the signal sent by its left neighbor (if present), and a "symmetric network," where it is interfered by both its left and its right neighbors. Each transmitter is cognizant of its own message, the messages of the $t_\ell$ transmitters to its left, and the messages of the $t_r$ transmitters to its right. Each receiver decodes its message based on the signals received at its own antenna, at the $r_\ell$ receive antennas to its left, and the $r_r$ receive antennas to its right. For such networks we provide upper and lower bounds on the multiplexing gain, i.e., on the high-SNR asymptotic logarithmic growth of the sum-rate capacity. In some cases our bounds meet, e.g., for the asymmetric network. Our results exhibit an equivalence between the transmitter side-information parameters $t_\ell, t_r$ and the receiver side-information parameters $r_\ell, r_r$ in the sense that increasing/decreasing $t_\ell$ or $t_r$ by a positive integer $\delta$ has the same effect on the multiplexing gain as increasing/decreasing $r_\ell$ or $r_r$ by $\delta$. Moreover---even in asymmetric networks---there is an equivalence between the left side-information parameters $t_\ell, r_\ell$ and the right side-information parameters $t_r, r_r$.Comment: Second revision submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Interference Alignment and the Degrees of Freedom for the K User Interference Channel

While the best known outerbound for the K user interference channel states that there cannot be more than K/2 degrees of freedom, it has been conjectured that in general the constant interference channel with any number of users has only one degree of freedom. In this paper, we explore the spatial degrees of freedom per orthogonal time and frequency dimension for the K user wireless interference channel where the channel coefficients take distinct values across frequency slots but are fixed in time. We answer five closely related questions. First, we show that K/2 degrees of freedom can be achieved by channel design, i.e. if the nodes are allowed to choose the best constant, finite and nonzero channel coefficient values. Second, we show that if channel coefficients can not be controlled by the nodes but are selected by nature, i.e., randomly drawn from a continuous distribution, the total number of spatial degrees of freedom for the K user interference channel is almost surely K/2 per orthogonal time and frequency dimension. Thus, only half the spatial degrees of freedom are lost due to distributed processing of transmitted and received signals on the interference channel. Third, we show that interference alignment and zero forcing suffice to achieve all the degrees of freedom in all cases. Fourth, we show that the degrees of freedom $D$ directly lead to an $\mathcal{O}(1)$ capacity characterization of the form $C(SNR)=D\log(1+SNR)+\mathcal{O}(1)$ for the multiple access channel, the broadcast channel, the 2 user interference channel, the 2 user MIMO X channel and the 3 user interference channel with M>1 antennas at each node. Fifth, we characterize the degree of freedom benefits from cognitive sharing of messages on the 3 user interference channel.Comment: 30 pages. Revision extends the 3 user proof to K user

Degrees of Freedom of Wireless X Networks

We explore the degrees of freedom of $M\times N$ user wireless $X$ networks, i.e. networks of $M$ transmitters and $N$ receivers where every transmitter has an independent message for every receiver. We derive a general outerbound on the degrees of freedom \emph{region} of these networks. When all nodes have a single antenna and all channel coefficients vary in time or frequency, we show that the \emph{total} number of degrees of freedom of the $X$ network is equal to $\frac{MN}{M+N-1}$ per orthogonal time and frequency dimension. Achievability is proved by constructing interference alignment schemes for $X$ networks that can come arbitrarily close to the outerbound on degrees of freedom. For the case where either M=2 or N=2 we find that the outerbound is exactly achievable. While $X$ networks have significant degrees of freedom benefits over interference networks when the number of users is small, our results show that as the number of users increases, this advantage disappears. Thus, for large $K$, the $K\times K$ user wireless $X$ network loses half the degrees of freedom relative to the $K\times K$ MIMO outerbound achievable through full cooperation. Interestingly, when there are few transmitters sending to many receivers ($N\gg M$) or many transmitters sending to few receivers ($M\gg N$), $X$ networks are able to approach the $\min(M,N)$ degrees of freedom possible with full cooperation on the $M\times N$ MIMO channel. Similar to the interference channel, we also construct an example of a 2 user $X$ channel with propagation delays where the outerbound on degrees of freedom is achieved through interference alignment based on a simple TDMA strategy.Comment: 26 page