Advanced Interference Management Technique: Potentials and Limitations

Interference management has the potential to improve spectrum efficiency in current and next generation wireless systems (e.g. 3GPP LTE and IEEE 802.11). Recently, new paradigms for interference management have emerged to tackle interference in a general class of wireless networks: interference shaping and interference exploitation. Both approaches offer better performance in interference-limited communication regimes than traditionally thought possible. This article provides a high-level overview of several different interference shaping and exploitation techniques for single-hop, multi-hop, and multi-way network architectures. Graphical illustrations that explain the intuition behind each strategy are provided. The article concludes with a discussion of practical challenges associated with adopting sophisticated interference management strategies in the future.Comment: To appear in IEEE Wireless Communications Magazin

Partial Zero-Forcing for Multi-Way Relay Networks

The ever increasing demands for mobile network access have resulted in a significant increase in bandwidth usage. By improving the system spectral efficiency, multi-way relay networks (MWRNs) provide promising approaches to address this challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel linear beamforming design, namely partial zero-forcing (PZF), for MWRNs with a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) relay. Compared to zero-forcing (ZF), PZF relaxes the constraints on the relay beamforming matrix such that only partial user-interference, instead of all, is canceled at the relay. The users eliminate the remaining interferences through self-interference and successive interference cancellation. A sum-rate maximization problem is formulated and solved to exploit the extra degrees-of-freedom resulted from PZF. Simulation results show that the proposed PZF relay beamforming design achieves significantly higher network sum-rates than the existing linear beamforming designs

Dynamic Interference Steering in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

With the development of diverse wireless communication technologies, interference has become a key impediment in network performance, thus making effective interference management (IM) essential to accommodate a rapidly increasing number of subscribers with diverse services. Although there have been numerous IM schemes proposed thus far, none of them are free of some form of cost. It is, therefore, important to balance the benefit brought by and cost of each adopted IM scheme by adapting its operating parameters to various network deployments and dynamic channel conditions. We propose a novel IM scheme, called dynamic interference steering (DIS), by recognizing the fact that interference can be not only suppressed or mitigated but also steered in a particular direction. Specifically, DIS exploits both channel state information (CSI) and the data contained in the interfering signal to generate a signal that modifies the spatial feature of the original interference to partially or fully cancel the interference appearing at the victim receiver. By intelligently determining the strength of the steering signal, DIS can steer the interference in an optimal direction to balance the transmitter's power used for IS and the desired signal's transmission. DIS is shown via simulation to be able to make better use of the transmit power, hence enhancing users' spectral efficiency (SE) effectively

Multi-user Cognitive Interference Channels: A Survey and New Capacity Results

This paper provides a survey of the state-of-the-art information theoretic analysis for overlay multi-user (more than two pairs) cognitive networks and reports new capacity results. In an overlay scenario, cognitive / secondary users share the same frequency band with licensed / primary users to efficiently exploit the spectrum. They do so without degrading the performance of the incumbent users, and may possibly even aid in transmitting their messages as cognitive users are assumed to possess the message(s) of primary user(s) and possibly other cognitive user(s). The survey begins with a short overview of the two-user overlay cognitive interference channel. The evolution from two-user to three-user overlay cognitive interference channels is described next, followed by generalizations to multi-user (arbitrary number of users) cognitive networks. The rest of the paper considers K-user cognitive interference channels with different message knowledge structures at the transmitters. Novel capacity inner and outer bounds are proposed. Channel conditions under which the bounds meet, thus characterizing the information theoretic capacity of the channel, for both Linear Deterministic and Gaussian channel models, are derived. The results show that for certain channel conditions distributed cognition, or having a cumulative message knowledge structure at the nodes, may not be worth the overhead as (approximately) the same capacity can be achieved by having only one global cognitive user whose role is to manage all the interference in the network. The paper concludes with future research directions.Comment: 7 figures, 16 pages, 1 tabl

Degrees-of-Freedom of the MIMO Three-Way Channel with Node-Intermittency

The characterization of fundamental performance bounds of many-to-many communication systems in which participating nodes are active in an intermittent way is one of the major challenges in communication theory. In order to address this issue, we introduce the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) three-way channel (3WC) with an intermittent node and study its degrees-of-freedom (DoF) region and sum-DoF. We devise a non-adaptive encoding scheme based on zero-forcing, interference alignment and erasure coding, and show its DoF region (and thus sum-DoF) optimality for non-intermittent 3WCs and its sum-DoF optimality for (node-)intermittent 3WCs. However, we show by example that in general some DoF tuples in the intermittent 3WC can only be achieved by adaptive schemes, such as decode-forward relaying. This shows that non-adaptive encoding is sufficient for the non-intermittent 3WC and for the sum-DoF of intermittent 3WCs, but adaptive encoding is necessary for the DoF region of intermittent 3WCs. Our work contributes to a better understanding of the fundamental limits of multi-way communication systems with intermittency and the impact of adaptation therein

Sum-Rate Analysis and Optimization of Self-Backhauling Based Full-Duplex Radio Access System

In this article, a radio access system with a self-backhauling full-duplex access node serving legacy half-duplex mobile devices is studied and analyzed. In particular, it is assumed that the access node is using the same center frequency for all the transmissions, meaning that also the backhauling is done using the same frequency resources as the uplink and downlink transmissions. It is further assumed that the access node has a massive array to facilitate efficient beamforming and self-interference nulling in its own receiver. As a starting point, the signal model for the considered access node is first derived, including all the transmitted and received signals within the cell. This is then used as a basis for obtaining the sum-rate expressions, which depict the overall rates experienced by the mobile users that are served by the access node. In addition, the data rate for the bi-directional backhaul link is also derived, since the access node must be able to backhaul itself wirelessly. The maximum achievable sum-rate is then determined by numerically solving an optimization problem constructed from the data rate expressions. The full-duplex scheme is also compared to two alternative transmission schemes, which perform all or some of the transmissions in half-duplex mode. The results show that the full-duplex capability of the access node is beneficial for maximizing the sum-rate, meaning that a simple half-duplex transmission scheme is typically not optimal. In particular, the highest sum-rate is usually provided by a relay type solution, where the access node acts as a full-duplex relay between the mobiles and the backhaul node.Comment: 30 pages, submitted for revie

On-off Switched Interference Alignment for Diversity Multiplexing Tradeoff Improvement in the 2-User X-Network with Two Antennas

To improve diversity gain in an interference channel and hence to maximize diversity multiplexing tradeoff (DMT), we propose on-off switched interference alignment (IA) where IA is intermittently utilized by switching IA on/off. For on-off switching, either IA with symbol extension or IA with Alamouti coding is adopted in this paper. Deriving and analyzing DMT of the proposed schemes, we reveal that the intermittent utilization of IA with simultaneous non-unique decoding can improve DMT in the 2-user X-channel with two antennas. Both the proposed schemes are shown to achieve diversity gain of 4 and DoF per user of $\frac{4}{3}$. In particular, the on-off switched IA with Alamouti coding, to the best of our knowledge, surpasses any other existing schemes for the 2-user X-channel with two antennas and nearly approaches the ideal DMT.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Wireless Physical Layer Security with Imperfect Channel State Information: A Survey

Physical layer security is an emerging technique to improve the wireless communication security, which is widely regarded as a complement to cryptographic technologies. To design physical layer security techniques under practical scenarios, the uncertainty and imperfections in the channel knowledge need to be taken into consideration. This paper provides a survey of recent research and development in physical layer security considering the imperfect channel state information (CSI) at communication nodes. We first present an overview of the main information-theoretic measures of the secrecy performance with imperfect CSI. Then, we describe several signal processing enhancements in secure transmission designs, such as secure on-off transmission, beamforming with artificial noise, and secure communication assisted by relay nodes or in cognitive radio systems. The recent studies of physical layer security in large-scale decentralized wireless networks are also summarized. Finally, the open problems for the on-going and future research are discussed

Wireless Backhaul Networks: Capacity Bound, Scalability Analysis and Design Guidelines

This paper studies the scalability of a wireless backhaul network modeled as a random extended network with multi-antenna base stations (BSs), where the number of antennas per BS is allowed to scale as a function of the network size. The antenna scaling is justified by the current trend towards the use of higher carrier frequencies, which allows to pack large number of antennas in small form factors. The main goal is to study the per-BS antenna requirement that ensures scalability of this network, i.e., its ability to deliver non-vanishing rate to each source-destination pair. We first derive an information theoretic upper bound on the capacity of this network under a general propagation model, which provides a lower bound on the per-BS antenna requirement. Then, we characterize the scalability requirements for two competing strategies of interest: (i) long hop: each source-destination pair minimizes the number of hops by sacrificing multiplexing gain while achieving full beamforming (power) gain over each hop, and (ii) short hop: each source-destination pair communicates through a series of short hops, each achieving full multiplexing gain. While long hop may seem more intuitive in the context of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission, we show that the short hop strategy is significantly more efficient in terms of per-BS antenna requirement for throughput scalability. As a part of the proof, we construct a scalable short hop strategy and show that it does not violate any fundamental limits on the spatial degrees of freedom (DoFs)

Harvest the potential of massive MIMO with multi-layer techniques

Massive MIMO is envisioned as a promising technology for 5G wireless networks due to its high potential to improve both spectral and energy efficiency. Although the massive MIMO system is based on innovations in the physical layer, the upper layer techniques also play important roles in harvesting the performance gains of massive MIMO. In this article, we begin with an analysis of the benefits and challenges of massive MIMO systems. We then investigate the multi-layer techniques for incorporating massive MIMO in several important network deployment scenarios. We conclude this article with a discussion of open and potential problems for future research.Comment: IEEE Networ