The DoF of the Asymmetric MIMO Interference Channel with Square Direct Link Channel Matrices

This paper studies the sum Degrees of Freedom (DoF) of $K$-user {\em asymmetric} MIMO Interference Channel (IC) with square direct link channel matrices, that is, the $u$-th transmitter and its intended receiver have $M_u\in\mathbb{N}$ antennas each, where $M_u$ need not be the same for all $u\in[1:K]$. Starting from a $3$-user example, it is shown that existing cooperation-based outer bounds are insufficient to characterize the DoF. Moreover, it is shown that two distinct operating regimes exist. With a {\it dominant} user, i.e., a user that has more antennas than the other two users combined, %(say $M_1\geq M_2+M_3$), it is DoF optimal to let that user transmit alone on the IC. Otherwise, it is DoF optimal to {\em decompose} and operate the 3-user MIMO IC as an $(M_1+ M_2+M_3)$-user SISO IC. This indicates that MIMO operations are useless from a DoF perspective in systems without a dominant user. The main contribution of the paper is the derivation of a novel outer bound for the general $K$-user case that is tight in the regime where a dominant user is not present; this is done by generalizing the insights from the 3-user example to an arbitrary number of users.Comment: Presented at 52nd Allerton Conference, 201

On the Capacity of the Finite Field Counterparts of Wireless Interference Networks

This work explores how degrees of freedom (DoF) results from wireless networks can be translated into capacity results for their finite field counterparts that arise in network coding applications. The main insight is that scalar (SISO) finite field channels over $\mathbb{F}_{p^n}$ are analogous to n x n vector (MIMO) channels in the wireless setting, but with an important distinction -- there is additional structure due to finite field arithmetic which enforces commutativity of matrix multiplication and limits the channel diversity to n, making these channels similar to diagonal channels in the wireless setting. Within the limits imposed by the channel structure, the DoF optimal precoding solutions for wireless networks can be translated into capacity optimal solutions for their finite field counterparts. This is shown through the study of the 2-user X channel and the 3-user interference channel. Besides bringing the insights from wireless networks into network coding applications, the study of finite field networks over $\mathbb{F}_{p^n}$ also touches upon important open problems in wireless networks (finite SNR, finite diversity scenarios) through interesting parallels between p and SNR, and n and diversity.Comment: Full version of paper accepted for presentation at ISIT 201

Degrees of Freedom of the 3-User Rank-Deficient MIMO Interference Channel

We provide the degrees of freedom (DoF) characterization for the $3$-user $M_T\times M_R$ multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel (IC) with \emph{rank-deficient} channel matrices, where each transmitter is equipped with $M_T$ antennas and each receiver with $M_R$ antennas, and the interfering channel matrices from each transmitter to the other two receivers are of ranks $D_1$ and $D_2$, respectively. One important intermediate step for both the converse and achievability arguments is to convert the fully-connected rank-deficient channel into an equivalent partially-connected full-rank MIMO-IC by invertible linear transformations. As such, existing techniques developed for full-rank MIMO-IC can be incorporated to derive the DoF outer and inner bounds for the rank-deficient case. Our result shows that when the interfering links are weak in terms of the channel ranks, i.e., $D_1+D_2\leq \min(M_T, M_R)$, zero forcing is sufficient to achieve the optimal DoF. On the other hand, when $D_1+D_2> \min(M_T, M_R)$, a combination of zero forcing and interference alignment is in general required for DoF optimality. The DoF characterization obtained in this paper unifies several existing results in the literature.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figures. To appear in IEEE transactions on wireless communication

Limited Feedback Design for Interference Alignment on MIMO Interference Networks with Heterogeneous Path Loss and Spatial Correlations

Interference alignment is degree of freedom optimal in K -user MIMO interference channels and many previous works have studied the transceiver designs. However, these works predominantly focus on networks with perfect channel state information at the transmitters and symmetrical interference topology. In this paper, we consider a limited feedback system with heterogeneous path loss and spatial correlations, and investigate how the dynamics of the interference topology can be exploited to improve the feedback efficiency. We propose a novel spatial codebook design, and perform dynamic quantization via bit allocations to adapt to the asymmetry of the interference topology. We bound the system throughput under the proposed dynamic scheme in terms of the transmit SNR, feedback bits and the interference topology parameters. It is shown that when the number of feedback bits scales with SNR as C_{s}\cdot\log\textrm{SNR}, the sum degrees of freedom of the network are preserved. Moreover, the value of scaling coefficient C_{s} can be significantly reduced in networks with asymmetric interference topology.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures, accepted by IEEE transactions on signal processing in Feb. 201

Dynamic Interference Mitigation for Generalized Partially Connected Quasi-static MIMO Interference Channel

Recent works on MIMO interference channels have shown that interference alignment can significantly increase the achievable degrees of freedom (DoF) of the network. However, most of these works have assumed a fully connected interference graph. In this paper, we investigate how the partial connectivity can be exploited to enhance system performance in MIMO interference networks. We propose a novel interference mitigation scheme which introduces constraints for the signal subspaces of the precoders and decorrelators to mitigate "many" interference nulling constraints at a cost of "little" freedoms in precoder and decorrelator design so as to extend the feasibility region of the interference alignment scheme. Our analysis shows that the proposed algorithm can significantly increase system DoF in symmetric partially connected MIMO interference networks. We also compare the performance of the proposed scheme with various baselines and show via simulations that the proposed algorithms could achieve significant gain in the system performance of randomly connected interference networks.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, accepted by IEEE Transaction on Signal Processin

Transmit Optimization with Improper Gaussian Signaling for Interference Channels

This paper studies the achievable rates of Gaussian interference channels with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), when improper or circularly asymmetric complex Gaussian signaling is applied. For the Gaussian multiple-input multiple-output interference channel (MIMO-IC) with the interference treated as Gaussian noise, we show that the user's achievable rate can be expressed as a summation of the rate achievable by the conventional proper or circularly symmetric complex Gaussian signaling in terms of the users' transmit covariance matrices, and an additional term, which is a function of both the users' transmit covariance and pseudo-covariance matrices. The additional degrees of freedom in the pseudo-covariance matrix, which is conventionally set to be zero for the case of proper Gaussian signaling, provide an opportunity to further improve the achievable rates of Gaussian MIMO-ICs by employing improper Gaussian signaling. To this end, this paper proposes widely linear precoding, which efficiently maps proper information-bearing signals to improper transmitted signals at each transmitter for any given pair of transmit covariance and pseudo-covariance matrices. In particular, for the case of two-user Gaussian single-input single-output interference channel (SISO-IC), we propose a joint covariance and pseudo-covariance optimization algorithm with improper Gaussian signaling to achieve the Pareto-optimal rates. By utilizing the separable structure of the achievable rate expression, an alternative algorithm with separate covariance and pseudo-covariance optimization is also proposed, which guarantees the rate improvement over conventional proper Gaussian signaling.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin