Optimality of Treating Interference as Noise: A Combinatorial Perspective

For single-antenna Gaussian interference channels, we re-formulate the problem of determining the Generalized Degrees of Freedom (GDoF) region achievable by treating interference as Gaussian noise (TIN) derived in [3] from a combinatorial perspective. We show that the TIN power control problem can be cast into an assignment problem, such that the globally optimal power allocation variables can be obtained by well-known polynomial time algorithms. Furthermore, the expression of the TIN-Achievable GDoF region (TINA region) can be substantially simplified with the aid of maximum weighted matchings. We also provide conditions under which the TINA region is a convex polytope that relax those in [3]. For these new conditions, together with a channel connectivity (i.e., interference topology) condition, we show TIN optimality for a new class of interference networks that is not included, nor includes, the class found in [3]. Building on the above insights, we consider the problem of joint link scheduling and power control in wireless networks, which has been widely studied as a basic physical layer mechanism for device-to-device (D2D) communications. Inspired by the relaxed TIN channel strength condition as well as the assignment-based power allocation, we propose a low-complexity GDoF-based distributed link scheduling and power control mechanism (ITLinQ+) that improves upon the ITLinQ scheme proposed in [4] and further improves over the heuristic approach known as FlashLinQ. It is demonstrated by simulation that ITLinQ+ provides significant average network throughput gains over both ITLinQ and FlashLinQ, and yet still maintains the same level of implementation complexity. More notably, the energy efficiency of the newly proposed ITLinQ+ is substantially larger than that of ITLinQ and FlashLinQ, which is desirable for D2D networks formed by battery-powered devices.Comment: A short version has been presented at IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2015), Hong Kon

The DoF of Network MIMO with Backhaul Delays

We consider the problem of downlink precoding for Network (multi-cell) MIMO networks where Transmitters (TXs) are provided with imperfect Channel State Information (CSI). Specifically, each TX receives a delayed channel estimate with the delay being specific to each channel component. This model is particularly adapted to the scenarios where a user feeds back its CSI to its serving base only as it is envisioned in future LTE networks. We analyze the impact of the delay during the backhaul-based CSI exchange on the rate performance achieved by Network MIMO. We highlight how delay can dramatically degrade system performance if existing precoding methods are to be used. We propose an alternative robust beamforming strategy which achieves the maximal performance, in DoF sense. We verify by simulations that the theoretical DoF improvement translates into a performance increase at finite Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) as well

On the Degrees of Freedom of time correlated MISO broadcast channel with delayed CSIT

We consider the time correlated MISO broadcast channel where the transmitter has partial knowledge on the current channel state, in addition to delayed channel state information (CSI). Rather than exploiting only the current CSI, as the zero-forcing precoding, or only the delayed CSI, as the Maddah-Ali-Tse (MAT) scheme, we propose a seamless strategy that takes advantage of both. The achievable degrees of freedom of the proposed scheme is characterized in terms of the quality of the current channel knowledge.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to ISIT 2012, extended version with detailed proof

Degrees of Freedom of Time Correlated MISO Broadcast Channel with Delayed CSIT

We consider the time correlated multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast channel where the transmitter has imperfect knowledge on the current channel state, in addition to delayed channel state information. By representing the quality of the current channel state information as P^-{\alpha} for the signal-to-noise ratio P and some constant {\alpha} \geq 0, we characterize the optimal degree of freedom region for this more general two-user MISO broadcast correlated channel. The essential ingredients of the proposed scheme lie in the quantization and multicasting of the overheard interferences, while broadcasting new private messages. Our proposed scheme smoothly bridges between the scheme recently proposed by Maddah-Ali and Tse with no current state information and a simple zero-forcing beamforming with perfect current state information.Comment: revised and final version, to appear in IEEE transactions on Information Theor