Interference Alignment

Foundations and Trends
R
in
Communications and Information Theory
Vol. 7, No. 1 (2010) 1134
c 2011 S. A. Jafar
DOI: 10.1561/0100000047
Interference Alignment A New
Look at Signal Dimensions in a
Communication Network
By Syed A. Jafar
Contents
1 Introduction 2
2 Linear Interference Alignment Concept 4
2.1 Few Observed Equations, Many Unknowns 6
3 Origins of Interference Alignment 10
3.1 Index Coding 10
3.2 X Channel 12
3.3 Interference Channel with K > 2 Users 14
4 New Challenges and Solutions 18
4.1 Feasibility of Linear Interference Alignment 19
4.2 Symbol Extensions 26
4.3 Asymmetric Complex Signaling 27
4.4 Channel Variations: Separability 33
4.5 Ergodic Interference Alignment 37
4.6 An Asymptotic Interference Alignment
Scheme [CJ08] 39
4.7 Interference Alignment Based on Separability
of Rationally Independent Dimensions 49
4.8 Lattice Alignment 52
4.9 Blind Interference Alignment 59
4.10 Retrospective Interference Alignment 63
5 Applications of Interference Alignment 68
5.1 K User Interference Channel 69
5.2 K User M N MIMO Interference Channels 71
5.3 Cellular Networks 75
5.4 X Networks 79
5.5 Compound MISO BC Channel 81
5.6 Network Coding Multiple Unicasts 83
5.7 Distributed Storage Exact Repair Problem 86
5.8 Multihop Interference Networks 92
5.9 Bidirectional Relay Interference Networks 99
5.10 Cooperative Interference Networks 102
5.11 Secrecy 106
6 Conclusion 109
A Degrees of Freedom (DoF) 112
B Generalized Degrees of Freedom (GDoF) 115
References 122
Foundations and Trends
R
in
Communications and Information Theory
Vol. 7, No. 1 (2010) 1134
c 2011 S. A. Jafar
DOI: 10.1561/0100000047
Interference Alignment A New
Look at Signal Dimensions in a
Communication Network
Syed A. Jafar
University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA, [email protected]
Abstract
This monograph introduces to the reader the idea of interference align-
ment, traces its origins, reviews a variety of interference alignment
schemes, summarizes the diverse settings where the idea of interference
alignment is applicable and highlights the common principles that cut
across these diverse applications. The focus is on theoretical aspects.
1
Introduction
Interference alignment is a radical idea that has recently emerged
out of the capacity analysis of interference networks. In a relatively
short time, this concept has challenged much of the conventional wis-
dom about the throughput limits of both wired and wireless networks.
A representative example is the wireless interference channel with K
transmitterreceiver pairs where, because of interference alignment,
each user is simultaneously able to send at a data rate equal to half
of his interference-free channel capacity to his desired receiver, even
though the number of users K can be arbitrarily large, thus show-
ing that the interference channel is not fundamentally interference-
limited. While the remarkable benets of interference alignment have
so far been shown mostly under idealized assumptions such as global
channel knowledge, bandwidth expansion, unlimited resolution, high
signal strengths and signicant delays, the idea has garnered rapidly
increasing interest in the communication, signal processing, network-
ing and information theory communities and has produced an array
of surprising and fundamental insights into the number of acces-
sible signaling dimensions in both wired and wireless communica-
tion networks. A diversity of tools from linear algebra, algebraic
geometry, diophantine approximation theory as well as coding and
2
3
traditional Shannon theory continue to be the basis for an increasing
variety of interference alignment schemes that include spatial align-
ment, lattice alignment, asymptotic alignment, asymmetric complex
signal alignment, opportunistic alignment, ergodic alignment, aligned
interference neutralization, blind alignment and retrospective align-
ment schemes. Applications include wireless interference networks,
X networks, cellular networks, two-way communication networks, mul-
ticast and compound networks, multihop multiow networks, tactical
communication networks with secrecy and jamming issues, cooperative
communication networks, cognitive radio networks, distributed data
storage networks, index coding networks, and wired multiple unicast
networks.
The goal of this monograph is to provide both a tutorial and a sur-
vey of the state-of-the-art on the topic of interference alignment. The
majority of the paper is written to be accessible to a graduate student
working in communication, signal processing, networking or informa-
tion theory. The focus is on theoretical aspects. The presentation style
of this monograph is informal, favoring broad intuition over mathemat-
ical rigor, and the ner details are mostly left to the references.
This monograph is organized into six sections, starting with this
section the introduction. Section 2 introduces the fundamental idea
of interference alignment in its simplest form in the language of ele-
mentary linear algebra. The origins of interference alignment are the
topic of Section 3 where the earliest applications of interference align-
ment are reviewed. Section 4 explores the challenges faced by interfer-
ence alignment schemes and the ingenious solutions that get around
those challenges. Section 5 reviews the diverse settings, including both
wireless and wired networks, where interference alignment has been
applied while highlighting how many of these diverse problems can be
reduced to the same essential problem for which a systematic solution
already exists. Each subsection of this section ends with pointers to one
or more open problems. Section 6 concludes the paper. An Appendix
is included at the end which provides a rudimentary introduction to
the Degrees-of-Freedom (DoF) and Generalized Degrees of Freedom
(GDoF) metrics that are necessary to appreciate the concepts discussed
throughout the paper.
2
Linear Interference Alignment Concept
While there are many interference alignment schemes that take much
more sophisticated forms, the origins of the idea lie in elementary linear
algebra. Consider a system of linear equations
y
1
= h
11
x
1
+ h
12
x
2
+ + h
1K
x
K
y
2
= h
21
x
1
+ h
22
x
2
+ + h
2K
x
K
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
y
B
= h
B1
x
1
+ h
B2
x
2
+ + h
BK
x
K
, (2.1)
where we have B observations y
1
, y
2
, . . . , y
B
, each in the form of a lin-
ear combination of K information symbols x
1
, x
2
, . . . , x
K
with coef-
cients h
ij
. Since we are interested in interference networks, let us
interpret K to be the number of transmitters, each trying to send one
information symbol, for a total of K independent information symbols
x
1
, x
2
, . . . , x
K
. The coecients h
ij
may be interpreted as the eective
channel coecients. Further, let us interpret B to be the bandwidth,
or the number of signaling dimensions accessible at a receiver through
a linear channel. Since the channel is linear, each signaling dimension
4
5
produces a linear combination of the transmitted information symbols.
Thus, a receiver has access to B signaling dimensions.
1
If the equations are generic, e.g., if eective channel coecients are
drawn from a continuous distribution, all the information symbols can
be recovered, provided that there are at least as many observations as
unknowns. Thus, if all symbols are desired by the receiver, we need at
least K signaling dimensions. However, we are interested in interfer-
ence networks where only a subset of the symbols are desired by the
receiver and the remaining symbols (which carry information for other
receivers) are undesired at this receiver, i.e., they only contribute inter-
ference. As a specic example, suppose the receiver is only interested in
symbol x
1
which carries information desired by this receiver while all
other symbols carry only interference. In this setting, we ask the ques-
tion how many observations does this receiver need in order to be
able to resolve its desired symbol from the interference? In other words,
how many signaling dimensions are needed, or equivalently, how much
bandwidth is needed for the receiver to be able to resolve its desired
symbol from the remaining K 1 undesired symbols?
In general, K signaling dimensions will be needed to resolve the 1
symbol desired by this receiver. And since there are presumably K
receivers, each interested in a dierent symbol, and each with access
to a dierent set of K linear equations dictated by its linear channel
to the transmitters, each receiver will be able to solve the system of
equations and recover its desired symbol. Thus, a total of K signaling
dimensions (or a bandwidth of K) are used so that each receiver is
able to resolve its desired one dimensional signal. In the terminology
of wireless interference networks, this solution corresponds to the cake-
cutting interpretation of spectrum allocation the total number of
signaling dimensions, i.e., the total bandwidth, is divided among the K
1
To keep the discussion general as well as compact we do not specify if the symbols are
from a nite eld or if they are real/complex, as the same ideas apply in both cases. In the
latter case, however, it is worth mentioning that as usual there are additive noise terms
and power constraints present, that are not shown in these equations, but without which
the communication problem would be trivial, i.e., the innite resolution of a real/complex
number will allow innite information transfer in any signal dimension.
6 Linear Interference Alignment Concept
users much like a cake, so that each user can communicate over a 1/K
fraction of it.
However, as it turns out, the cake-cutting bandwidth allocation is
not optimal. It is possible to recover the desired information symbol
even when the number of linear equations available to the receiver is
much smaller than the number of unknowns.
2.1 Few Observed Equations, Many Unknowns
To understand this, let us ask the question what is required for a
receiver to resolve symbol x
1
from interference? This question has a
simple answer. Let us re-write the system of linear equations observed
by the receiver as follows:
Y = H
1
x
1
+ H
2
x
2
+ + H
K
x
K
, (2.2)
where
Y =
_
_
y
1
y
2
.
.
.
y
B
_
_
and H
k
=
_
_
h
1k
h
2k
.
.
.
h
Bk
_
_
are the observations vector and the signaling dimension along which the
symbol x
k
is observed, respectively. In the parlance of the multiple-
input multiple-output systems (MIMO) literature, we will call the
vector H
k
the received beam direction for symbol x
k
. With this termi-
nology, the condition for the receiver to recover the desired symbol x
1
from the observations vector Y is simply that the received beam for x
1
,
i.e., H
1
should not be contained in the vector space spanned by the
undesired beams H
2
, . . . , H
K
. In other words, the receiver can recover
x
1
if and only if
H
1
/ span(H
2
, H
3
, . . . , H
K
). (2.3)
The K 1 interference beams H
2
, H
3
, . . . , H
K
will in general span
a vector space of min(B, K 1) dimensions. Thus, if B < K, i.e., the
bandwidth is smaller than the number of users, the interference will
span min(B, K 1) = B dimensions. Since all the available B dimen-
sions are spanned by interference beams, the desired signal beam will lie
within the interference space as well and cannot be resolved. However, if
the interference beams could be consolidated into a smaller subspace so
that they do not span the entire available signal space at the receiver,
and the desired signal beam could avoid falling into the interference
space, then the receiver could indeed recover its desired symbol. This
is precisely the idea of interference alignment.
For example, consider the system of observed equations
y
1
= 3x
1
+ 2x
2
+ 3x
3
+ x
4
+ 5x
5
(2.4)
y
2
= 2x
1
+ 4x
2
+ x
3
3x
4
+ 5x
5
(2.5)
y
3
= 4x
1
+ 3x
2
+ 5x
3
+ 2x
4
+ 8x
5
. (2.6)
So we are operating over a three-dimensional space (total band-
width =3), and there are ve unknowns. To solve for all ve unknowns
we will need ve observations (i.e., total bandwidth =5). However, the
receiver only wants to recover x
1
. From these equations, even though
the number of equations is smaller than the number of unknowns,
it turns out that indeed x
1
can be recovered, because the interfering
beams span only a two-dimensional vector space, leaving one dimen-
sion free from interference. To see this, note that H
4
= H
3
H
2
and
H
5
= H
3
+ H
2
. The received signal can be projected along the inter-
ference free dimension to recover x
1
. To see this explicitly, note that the
vector U = [17 1 10]
T
is orthogonal to all the interference vec-
tors, and therefore the projection U
T
Y eliminates all the interference
leaving us:
17y
1
y
2
10y
3
= 9x
1
(2.7)
thus, x
1
is recovered from the observed values y
1
, y
2
, y
3
in the three-
dimensional space, even when the number of unknowns is 5 > 3.
To summarize, interference alignment allows many interfering users
to communicate simultaneously over a small number of signaling
dimensions (bandwidth) by consolidating the space spanned by the
interference at each receiver within a small number of dimensions, while
keeping the desired signals separable from interference so that they
can be projected into the null space of the interference and thereby
recovered free from interference.
8 Linear Interference Alignment Concept
The desired outcome sought by interference alignment is illustrated
by the simple example provided above. How to accomplish this goal
within the constraints of each specic communication network is the
main challenge in designing linear interference alignment schemes. The
example presented above focused on one receiver (say, Receiver 1) that
desires the symbol x
1
. Presumably, there are other receivers simulta-
neously observing the outputs of their own channels over the same
bandwidth B, i.e., they each have B linear equations, but are inter-
ested in dierent desired symbols. For instance, another receiver (say
Receiver 2) may want only the symbol x
2
and the symbols x
1
, x
3
, x
4
, x
5
will constitute interference at that receiver. For Receiver 2 to be able to
recover x
2
he needs the interfering beams due to symbols x
1
, x
3
, x
4
, x
5
to align into a two dimensional space and the desired signal beam for
x
2
to not align in that space. The reason the requirements of Receiver
2 do not directly conict with the requirements of Receiver 1 is because
each receiver sees a dierent picture, i.e., the set of equations seen at
each receiver is dierent from other receivers. This is the very impor-
tant principle of relativity of alignment, i.e., the alignment of signals is
dierent at each receiver. Since each receiver sees a dierent picture, it
may be possible through careful design of transmitted signals, to tai-
lor the observations of each receiver in such a manner that the desired
signals remain resolvable, while the interfering signals cast overlap-
ping shadows. Thus, the relativity of alignment is the enabling premise
of interference alignment. Without it, the opportunity for interference
alignment would not exist.
While the relativity of alignment opens the door to interference
alignment schemes, it does not by itself solve the problem for us. Signals
do not align into desirable patterns naturally, or by accident. Much
like when dropping a couple of pencils on the oor, the probability
that they will land exactly parallel is small, so is the probability that
a random choice of signal vectors will automatically achieve desired
interference alignment outcomes by accident. Thus, the most impor-
tant challenge in interference alignment schemes is the design of signal
vectors to satisfy the desired alignment conditions. Dierent settings
allow varying amounts of freedom in this regard. For example, the chan-
nel coecients in one-hop wireless networks are typically determined
entirely by nature, and interference must be aligned in-spite of having
no control over the channel realizations. In multihop wired networks,
e.g., network coding problems, or even in multihop wireless networks,
the choice of the functionality of intermediate nodes may provide some
amount of additional freedom to design the end-to-end channel itself to
make alignment easier. In most cases, however, the alignment problem
remains nontrivial.
3
Origins of Interference Alignment
Applications of interference alignment can be found as early as the
1998 paper of Birk and Kol [13, 14] where the index coding problem
was introduced. Interference alignment was observed again in 2006 in
the specialized context of the X channel by Maddah-Ali et al. in [90] and
was implicitly used for the compound MISO broadcast (BC) channel
by Weingarten et al. in [159] in 2007. The idea was crystallized by Jafar
and Shamai in [67] and its strength as a general principle was estab-
lished by Cadambe and Jafar who introduced in [22] a mechanism to
align an arbitrarily large number of interferers, leading to the surpris-
ing conclusion that wireless networks are not essentially interference
limited. It has since continued to evolve in increasingly sophisticated
forms across a variety of applications. In this section, we review the
early applications of interference alignment in [13, 14, 22, 67, 90].
3.1 Index Coding
The earliest application of interference alignment, that we are aware
of, appears in Example 7 of the 1998 INFOCOM paper of Birk and
Kol [13, 14] in the context of the Informed Source Coding on Demand
10
3.1 Index Coding 11
(ISCOD) problem (also known as the index coding problem). The prob-
lem formulation, introduced in the same paper, can correspond to a
variety of settings. As described by Birk and Kol, it can be seen as a
wireless BC channel with cognitive receivers. It can also equivalently
be formulated as a network coding problem over wired networks.
Figure 3.1 presents the problem dened in Example 7 of Birk and
Kols paper both as a wireless BC channel with cognitive receivers as
well as the equivalent wired network coding problem. This is a BC
channel setting where ve independent information symbols a, b, c, d, x
are desired by ve separate receivers (labeled according to their desired
messages in Figure 3.1). Each receiver has some cognitive side informa-
tion, i.e., knows some of the messages that it does not desire (e.g., from
prior transmissions of those messages that failed to reach the desired
nodes but were strong enough to be decoded at the undesired receivers).
For instance, in Figure 3.1, information symbols b, x are known at the
receiver that desires symbol a; a, x are known by the receiver that
desires b; b, d are known by the receiver that desires c; b, c are known
at the receiver that desires d; and a, c, d are known at the receiver that
Fig. 3.1 An interference alignment solution Example 7 of [13]. On the left is a BC
channel with cognitive receivers. On the right is a network coding version of the same
problem. In each case, after removing the two known interference symbols available to
them, the receivers that desire a, b, c, d, respectively, each have three unknowns left and
only two linear equations provided by S. In each case interference alignment is employed to
align the two remaining undesired symbols into one dimension, leaving the other dimension
interference-free to recover the desired symbol.
12 Origins of Interference Alignment
desires the symbol x. The solution proposed by Birk and Kol uses two
signaling dimensions, i.e., two consecutive channel uses, to send the
symbol S from the transmitter which is comprised as:
S =
_
1
0
_
a +
_
1
1
_
b +
_
0
1
_
c +
_
0
1
_
d +
_
1
0
_
x. (3.1)
To see how interference alignment is used, let us consider how each
receiver recovers its desired information. Receiver a, i.e., the receiver
that desires the symbol a has access to the two-dimensional symbol S,
and it also observes b and x as cognitive information. After removing
the known symbols b and x from S the receiver is left with three remain-
ing unknown symbols a, c, d in a two-dimensional space. Since a is the
desired symbol, the remaining two symbols c, d that constitute interfer-
ence, must align. Indeed, since both c and d are seen along the interfer-
ence beam [0 1]
T
these symbols do align into a one-dimensional space,
and since a is seen along the beam [1 0]
T
, it remains resolvable from the
interference. Similarly, at receiver b, after removing the known symbols
there are three remaining unknowns b, c, d in a 2 dimensional space.
Once again, since c, d align and b does not align with c, d the desired
information is recovered. Now consider receiver c which is left with
three unknown symbols a, c, x in a two-dimensional space. However,
since a, x are both aligned into the same dimension [1 0]
T
, and c is along
a dierent dimension, the desired information is recovered. Interference
alignment is similarly exploited at Receiver d. And nally, receiver x,
is left with only two unknown symbols b, x in a two-dimensional space.
Since two equations are enough to recover two unknown symbols, no
interference alignment is needed at Receiver x.
Birk and Kol point out the surprising nature of this result, and
attribute the apparent miracle to the observation that not all infor-
mation is desired by all nodes, which is indeed the key to interference
alignment, allowing undesired information to be consolidated into a
smaller dimension.
3.2 X Channel
While the index coding literature continued to use interference align-
ment schemes specialized to their problem, the study of the DoF of
3.2 X Channel 13
the two user wireless X channel initiated by Maddah-Ali et al. in
a 2006 ISIT paper [91] found surprisingly high DoF (relative to the
prior studies of the interference channel [65]). The scheme proposed by
Maddah-Ali et al. was not an interference alignment scheme per se it
was an iterative achievable scheme for the X channel, built upon dirty
paper coding and successive decoding as integral elements, that was
observed by Maddah-Ali et al. in [90] to lead to increasing overlap of
interference spaces as signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) approaches
innity.
The surprising DoF results of [90, 91] and the observation of the role
of overlapping interference spaces motivated the work of Jafar et al.,
starting as a 2006 technical report [62] and leading up to the results
in [67]. The most signicant contribution of Jafar and Shamais work
was to crystallize the idea of interference alignment. Specically, ref-
erence [67] presented the interference alignment scheme for the two
user X channel in its essential linear form (see Figure 3.2), thereby
establishing that neither dirty paper coding nor successive decoding
or iterative solutions were required. By stripping away the restrictive
dependencies on the X channel setting and presenting alignment from
a linear algebraic vector space perspective, the explicit alignment solu-
tion of [67] showed the idea of interference alignment to be a general
principle. The recognition of the generality of the idea also necessitated
a context-independent nomenclature and the terminology interfer-
ence alignment was introduced [67]. Following [62, 67], an explicit lin-
ear form of interference alignment was subsequently also adopted by
Maddah-Ali et al. in their full paper [89, 92].
Figure 3.2 shows an X channel with two transmitters and two
receivers, and all nodes equipped with three antennas. The channel
between Transmitter t and Receiver r is assumed to be a generic
1
3 3 linear transformation indicated as H
[rt]
with r, t 1, 2. Each
transmitter has a message for each receiver for a total of four indepen-
dent messages. Even though there are a total of four messages and only
three signaling dimensions interference alignment enables one symbol
1
The generic characterization refers to the assumption that the channel coecients are
drawn from a continuous distribution.
Fig. 3.2 Interference alignment on the X Channel [67] Each receiver sees three linear
equations in four unknowns. Since only two of the unknowns are desired Interference align-
ment makes it possible to recover their values by aligning the two undesired symbols along
the same dimension at each receiver.
per message to be delivered free from interference. This is accom-
plished by aligning the two undesired symbols at each receiver along
a one-dimensional vector, indicated as the generic 3 1 vector S
[1]
for
Receiver 1 and S
[2]
for Receiver 2 in Figure 3.2. The choice of beam-
forming vectors at the transmitter is such that the received vectors will
be aligned in the direction S
[i]
for the undesired receiver i. For instance,
the symbol x
11
is sent by Transmitter 1 along the 3 1 beamforming
vector (H
[21]
)
1
S
[2]
so that when it goes through the channel H
[21]
to reach Receiver 2, where it is undesired, it will be rotated into the
direction S
[2]
. The generic nature of channel matrices guarantees that
any accidental alignments of the desired symbols do not take place.
As a result, the desired symbols occupy linearly independent signal
dimensions and can be isolated for a total of 4 DoF. Note that the cor-
responding two user interference channel setting allows only 3 DoF [65].
3.3 Interference Channel with K > 2 Users
The next setting for interference alignment was the K user interference
channel [22]. This work further cemented the status of interference
alignment as a general principle by establishing its applications in
a variety of contexts ranging from MIMO beamforming solutions
Fig. 3.3 Interference alignment on the 3 User Interference Channel [22] (a) through prop-
agation delays. Each transmitter is active half the time over odd time slots. Desired
links introduce even delays while interfering links introduce odd delays so that interference
is aligned over even time slots at each receiver and desired symbols are received free from
interference. (b) through phase alignment. Each transmitter sends only real signals (sacri-
cing the imaginary baseband dimension). The direct channels produce no phase shift while
the interfering channels rotate the phase by 90
. All interference aligns in the imaginary

dimension at each receiver and desired signals are recovered free from interference over the
real dimension.
(Figure 3.4) to propagation delay based alignment (Figure 3.3(a)) and
phase alignments (Figure 3.3(b)).
While the propagation delay based alignment shown in Figure 3.3(a)
appears to be a very specialized setting, it is quite insightful. It is shown
in [64] that even with random node positions (i.e., random propagation
delays) and arbitrary number of users it is possible (almost surely)
to achieve propagation delay based interference alignment such that
every user can access the channel free from interference for a fraction
1/2 of the time, where > 0 can be chosen to be arbitrarily small, by
choosing the basic symbol duration small enough. The need to choose
the symbol duration small enough, i.e., the need to have essentially
unlimited resolvability of received signals, or equivalently, the need to
make bandwidth arbitrarily large, is an inescapable feature, in one form
or another, of almost all known K user interference channel alignment
schemes that guarantee half the cake per user. In other words, each user
is guaranteed half the cake, only if the cake can be made large enough.
This phenomenon, called bandwidth scaling, is explicitly characterized
by Grokop et al. in [55] and its necessity is highlighted, also in a prop-
agation delay based framework. Specically, Grokop et al. show that
in a K user interference channel, bandwidth should scale as O(K
2K
2
)
and point out that this bandwidth scaling factor is evident in most
interference alignment schemes for the K user interference channel.
Propagation delay based interference alignment for K user interfer-
ence channel is also investigated in [145] where, again, K/2 DoF are
shown to be achievable. References [64, 96] also explore the geomet-
rical placements of nodes that allows perfect propagation delay based
alignment schemes under a line of sight propagation model. Similar to
the propagation delay example of Figure 3.3(a), the phase alignment
example shown in Figure 3.3(b) appears to be another toy example,
but carries a very useful insight leading to the asymmetric complex
signaling approach that will also be presented later in this monograph.
It is remarkable that the propagation delay example exploits only the
knowledge of the propagation delays and does not require any knowl-
edge of the channel fading coecient values at the transmitters, while
the phase alignment example exploits only the phase of the channel
coecients and does not require any knowledge of the strengths of the
channel coecients at the transmitters in order to align interference.
Another interesting observation is that essentially the two models are
similar, because both channel phase dierences and channel propaga-
tion delay dierences arise out of dierences in channel propagation
path lengths.
Relative to all previous applications of interference alignment, the
interference channel setting with three or more users presents a funda-
mental new challenge in that each signal needs to satisfy more than one
alignment condition. For instance, in a three user interference channel,
Transmitter 1s signal needs to align with Transmitter 2s signal at
Receiver 3, and with Transmitter 3s signal at Receiver 2. This creates
a chain of alignment conditions that in the end folds back upon itself,
as shown in Figure 3.4, so that the optimal signaling basis vectors end
up being the basis vectors of an invariant subspace (e.g., eigenvectors
in the example illustrated in Figure 3.4) of a product form of channel
matrices.
Fig. 3.4 Interference alignment on the 3 User MIMO Interference Channel with 2 antenna
nodes [22] Each receiver sees 2 linear equations in 3 unknowns. Since only one of the
unknowns is desired, interference alignment makes it possible to recover its value by aligning
the two undesired symbols along the same dimension at each receiver. A B is short hand
notation for column-span(A) =column-span(B).
For the example of Figure 3.4, interference alignment allows a total
of 3 DoF (which is also the maximum value possible for this channel),
whereas conventional schemes that orthogonalize the users can allow
no more than a total of 2 DoF per channel use. Whereas in an orthog-
onalized solution, e.g., TDMA, each user would send two symbols on
his 2 2 MIMO channel and only one user will be active at a time, the
interference alignment solution allows each user to send only one infor-
mation symbol (thus sacricing half the signaling dimensions available
to that user) but all the users are active at all times.
4
New Challenges and Solutions
The example of Figure 3.4 extends in a relatively straightforward
manner to the case where each user is equipped with more than two
antennas [22]. However, the example of Figure 3.4 does not extend to
more than three users or even the three user setting when all nodes are
equipped with only one antenna. In fact, the problem becomes much
more dicult as the number of users increases beyond three or the
number of antennas at each node is reduced to one. Two main issues
faced by interference alignment schemes are:
1. The number of alignment constraints grows very rapidly as
the number of interfering users is increased. For instance, in
a K user interference channel, each of the K receivers needs
an alignment of K 1 interfering signal spaces, for a total
of O(K
2
) signal space alignment constraints. Since there are
only K signal spaces (one at each transmitter) to be chosen
in order to satisfy O(K
2
) signal space alignment constraints,
the problem can quickly appear infeasible.
2. The diversity of channels which enables the relativity of
alignment which in turn is the enabling premise for
18
interference alignment is often a limiting factor, e.g., when
each node has only one antenna and all channels are constant
across time and frequency. Limited diversity imposes funda-
mental limitations on the extent to which interference can
be aligned in a network.
Further issues to be dealt with by interference alignment schemes
include the imperfect, noisy, localized and possibly delayed nature of
channel knowledge feedback to the transmitters where such knowledge
is crucial to achieve interference alignment. These challenges have given
rise to ingenious solutions in the form of new interference alignment
schemes, invariably providing new and surprising insights into the non-
trivial interplay of signaling dimensions in an interference network. The
purpose of this section is to summarize these challenges and the corre-
sponding solutions.
4.1 Feasibility of Linear Interference Alignment
Linear interference alignment, i.e., alignment of signal spaces based on
linear precoding (beamforming) schemes is the simplest form of inter-
ference alignment. Since beamforming schemes are common in existing
MIMO point to point, BC and multiple access (MAC) networks, lin-
ear interference alignment is also the most easily accessible form of
interference alignment from a practical perspective.
The feasibility of linear interference alignment is investigated for
the MIMO interference channel setting in [48, 116, 124, 146, 162].
Following the notation of [162], let us dene a (M
1
N
1
, d
1
)(M
2

N
2
, d
2
) (M
K
N
K
, d
K
) interference alignment setting as an inter-
ference channel with K users where Transmitter k, equipped with
M
k
antennas, wants to send d
k
independent streams of information
symbols, each corresponding to one DoF, to Receiver k which is
equipped with N
k
antennas, k /

= 1, 2, . . . , K. In the symmetric
setting, i.e., M
k
= M, N
k
= N, d
k
= d for all k /, this is denoted as
an (M N, d)
K
interference channel. Thus, Figure 3.4 presents the
solution for the (2 2, 1)
3
interference channel.
20 New Challenges and Solutions
The (2 2, 1)
3
setting is not the only setting where nontrivial
analytical interference alignment solutions can be found. Reference
[146] provides analytical achievable schemes for (N N, 1)
N+1
sys-
tems. In some cases, with more constrained settings (i.e., with fewer
free variables but the same number of alignment constraints), like
(2 3)
2
(3 2)
2
, i.e., a four user interference channel with two 2 3
users and two 3 2 users, reference [162] nds analytical interference
alignment solutions as well.
In general, the feasibility of a linear interference alignment
solution for the (M
1
N
1
, d
1
)(M
2
N
2
, d
2
) (M
K
N
K
, d
K
) inter-
ference channel is shown in [48, 162] to be equivalent to the exis-
tence of M
k
d
k
transmit precoding matrices V
k
, rank(V
k
) = d
k
, and
N
k
d
k
receive combining matrices U
k
, rank(U
k
) = d
k
, such that for
all j, k /, j ,= k,
U
j
H
[jk]
V
k
= 0
d
j
d
k
(4.1)
rank(U
k
H
[kk]
V
k
) = d
k
, (4.2)
where H
[jk]
is the N
k
M
j
linear transformation representing the
channel between Receiver j and Transmitter k. Of the two conditions,
(4.1) may be interpreted as the condition for the existence of an inter-
ference free space of desired dimensions, while (4.2) is the condition
that ensures that the desired signal is visible and resolvable within the
interference-free space.
Reciprocity: An immediate consequence of this formulation is the
reciprocity of linear interference alignment linear interference align-
ment is feasible for the (M
1
N
1
, d
1
)(M
2
N
2
, d
2
) (M
K
N
K
, d
K
)
interference channel if and only if it is feasible for the (N
1

M
1
, d
1
)(N
2
M
2
, d
2
) (N
K
M
K
, d
K
) interference channel, i.e., the
reciprocal channel obtained by switching the roles of all transmitters
and receivers. The reciprocity is evident by a corresponding switch-
ing of transmit precoding matrices V
k
and the receive combining
matrices U
k
.
Conditions (4.2) and (4.1) are necessary and sucient for feasibil-
ity of linear interference alignment regardless of whether the channel
matrices are generic or arbitrarily chosen, and whether or not they
possess any specialized structure, such as (block) diagonal forms. Not
much is known about the feasibility of linear interference alignment for
arbitrary choice of channel coecients. In fact, determining the feasi-
bility of linear interference alignment for arbitrary channel realizations
has been shown to be NP-hard by Razaviyayn et al. in [124] as the
number of users becomes large. This is because for some channel real-
izations the feasibility problem subsumes the maximum independent set
problem and the 3-colorability problem, both of which are known to
be NP-complete. However, there has been substantial progress in the
understanding of the feasibility of linear interference alignment over
generic, structureless channels. Feasibility results for generic channels
are invariably in the form of probabilistic guarantees that the alignment
problem is feasible (infeasible) for almost all channel realizations, when
the channels are drawn from a continuous distribution. Since wireless
channels are determined by nature, and therefore generic, there is much
interest in such feasibility characterizations. It is important to mention
that generic channels can still have structure, e.g., block diagonal forms
resulting from coding across parallel channel realizations (dierent time
slots or carriers). While this structure has obvious practical relevance,
the feasibility studies have so far been mostly limited to structure-
less generic channels. From a practical standpoint, structureless generic
channels correspond to spatial precoding over multiple antennas with-
out allowing symbol extensions, i.e., without coding across multiple
channel realizations in time/frequency. The understanding of feasibil-
ity of linear interference alignment over generic structureless channels
is reviewed next.
For the most commonly studied interference channel setting over
single-hop wireless networks, the direct channels H
[kk]
are su-
ciently independent of cross-channels H
[jk]
and have enough DoF
(rank(H
[kk]
) = min(M
k
, N
k
) d
k
) so that the condition (4.2) is auto-
matically satised almost surely if V
k
and U
k
with rank(V
k
) =
rank(U
k
) = d
k
are found only based on (4.1) with no regard to direct
channels H
[kk]
. Under this assumption of independence of direct chan-
nels, the feasibility of linear interference alignment is equivalent to the
existence of nontrivial solutions to the system of polynomial equations
(4.1) alone.
The solvability of a system of polynomial equations is, in general,
an open problem in algebraic geometry. However, it is known that a
generic system of polynomial equations is solvable if and only if the
number of equations does not exceed the number of variables. While the
qualication of generic property is intended in a precise technical sense
that does not strictly apply to the problem at hand, the intuition behind
the statement is believed to be much more widely true. Relying on this
intuition, reference [162] denes an interference alignment problem as
improper or proper based on whether or not the number of equations
exceeds the number of variables, with the understanding that proper
systems are likely to be feasible and improper systems are likely to be
infeasible. The upshot (Theorem 1 of [162]) is the qualication of the
(M N, d)
K
linear interference alignment problem as proper if and
only if
d
M + N
K + 1
. (4.3)
It is notable that the (2 2, 1)
3
system of Figure 3.4 satises (4.3)
with equality, i.e., all available variables are used to satisfy the align-
ment conditions. The reciprocity of linear alignment conditions is evi-
dent in the interchangeability of M, N. Another interesting observation
here is that the number of antennas at each transmitter and receiver
M, N aects the feasibility only through their sum M + N. Thus,
for example, the systems (4 1, 1)
4
, (3 2, 1)
2
, (2 3, 1)
4
, (1 4, 1)
4
,
which have the same value of M + N all satisfy the condition (4.3)
with equality. While the feasibility of (4 1, 1)
4
and (1 4, 1)
4
is evi-
dent simply by zero-forcing at the transmitters and receivers, respec-
tively, the feasibility of (3 2, 1)
4
, (2 3, 1)
4
is indicated by condition
(4.3) and is veried numerically as well as analytically in [162].
In general, Yetis et al. label a system as proper if and only if
every subset of alignment equations involves at least as many inde-
pendent variables as the number of equations (which boils down to
the condition (4.3) when every transmitter has the same number of
antennas M, every receiver has the same number of antennas N, and
every user wants the same number of Dof d). While similar conclusions
are also obtained by Tresch et al. in [146] and Negro et al. in [104],
rigorous connections between proper/improper systems and feasibility/
infeasibility of linear interference alignment were initially only available
for a few special cases. For example, Yetis et al. used Bernshteins the-
orem from algebraic geometry to analytically evaluate the feasibility
of linear interference alignment because the number of solutions of the
system of polynomials can be evaluated as the mixed volume of the
Newton polytopes corresponding to the support (i.e., the monomials
with non-zero coecients) of the polynomials. Since the complexity of
this calculation is prohibitive, its utility is limited to smaller dimen-
sions, such as the (2 3, 1)
4
setting where reference [162] is able to
analytically verify the feasibility of interference alignment. Again based
on Bernshteins theorem, it was shown that improper systems are infea-
sibile for the (M N, 1)
K
setting. Interestingly, it was also shown that
if d > 1, i.e., there are multiple beams per user, then proper systems
satisfying condition (4.3) may still not be feasible. An example is the
(3 3, 2)
2
setting which satises (4.3) but is not feasible [65].
The relationship conjectured by Yetis et al. in [162] between
proper/improper systems and feasibility/infeasibility of linear interfer-
ence alignment, is settled completely in one direction and partially in
the other direction by Bresler et al. in [17] and by Razaviyayn et al.
in [123]. Since the K = 2 user case is completely solved in [65], these
works focus on the K 3 setting. Specically, it is shown that improper
systems are indeed infeasible in general. In the other direction, it is
shown that if all users desire the same DoF d and the number of anten-
nas M
k
, N
k
are divisible by d for each k, then proper systems are also
feasible. Further, in the symmetric (M N, d)
K
setting, if both M, N
are divisible by d, then the feasibility condition is precisely given by
(4.3). If also M = N (square channel matrices), then the feasibility con-
dition is precisely given by (4.3) even if M, N are not divisible by d.
Note that since this claim is made specically for K 3, the (3 3, 2)
2
counter-example mentioned above is not applicable.
It is worthwhile to recall that these feasibility results are based
on linear interference alignment with no symbol extensions. This is
because symbol extensions create structure and dependencies in the
channel matrices, which violates the assumption of generic channels.
The signicance of channel structure is highlighted by contrasting the
feasibility condition d 2M/(K + 1) implied by (4.3) with the achiev-
ability of d = M/2 DoF established in [22], both for the (M M, d)
K
setting. While the former limits the total DoF to no more than 2 times
the single user interference-free DoF, the latter implies unlimited total
DoF as the number of users continues to increase.
A parallel body of work has focused on iterative algorithms to
not only test the feasibility of linear interference alignment but also
to numerically nd the alignment solutions. This work is initiated by
Gomadam et al. in [48] where the motivation for an iterative approach
is to achieve interference alignment with only local channel knowledge,
by exploiting the two-way nature of communication and the recipro-
cal nature of the physical propagation medium. The goal of achieving
interference alignment leads to a fundamental departure from more
conventional iterative signal space optimization approaches that seek
interference avoidance. Interference avoidance is a selsh strategy where
each user attempts to maximize his own signal-to-interference-and-
noise power ratio (SINR) by trying to direct his desired signals away
from the interference at his desired receiver. Especially at high SNR,
the selsh approach leads to very suboptimal Nash equilibrium points.
Instead, the interference alignment approach is primarily driven by goal
of minimizing the size of the interference space at undesired receivers
with little regard to the fate of the desired signal at the desired receiver.
The new approach, combined with the reciprocity of the wireless propa-
gation medium, leads naturally to the distributed and iterative interfer-
ence alignment algorithm proposed in [48]. Starting with an arbitrary
choice of transmit precoding vectors V
k
, the goal is for each receiver
to identify the directions along which it receives the least interference.
Then, as the transmitters and receivers switch roles in the reciprocal
network, the new transmit precoding vectors are same directions along
which least interference was received in the original network. The main
insight is that the directions along which the least interference is seen
at a receiver from its undesired transmitters in the original network
will also be the transmit directions that cause the least interference at
undesired receivers in the reciprocal network. This leads to an iterative
algorithm that primarily seeks to consolidate interference into a small
number of dimensions. Due to the nonconvex nature of the problem
convergence to the global optimum is not guaranteed. Since interfer-
ence alignment solutions are optimal primarily at high SNR, Gomadam
et al. [48] also propose another iterative algorithm, called the max-SINR
algorithm, which combines both the selsh and alignment objectives,
in a simple albeit ad-hoc manner, making it dicult to analyze the
convergence properties. As expected, the max SINR algorithm shows
signicant benets at low to intermediate SNR values and approaches
interference alignment at high SNR.
Following [48], several iterative algorithmic approaches have been
proposed for the linear interference alignment problem. Reference [116]
presents an alternating minimization approach that does not explic-
itly assume channel reciprocity, but is algorithmically identical to the
distributed interference alignment algorithm of [48]. Reference [127]
proposes an alternative approach based on weighted minimum mean-
square error (MMSE) beamforming which leads to a better-behaved
objective, compares favorably to the max-SINR algorithm and can also
accommodate unequal priorities for the users rates. MMSE based iter-
ative algorithms and better behaved versions of the max-SINR algo-
rithm are also presented in [118, 131]. The optimality of the max-SINR
algorithm within the class of linear beamforming algorithms and its
local convergence with exponential rate, are established at high SNR
in [114]. Analytical approximations for the high-SNR slope and the
SNR-oset for linear interference alignment schemes in large systems
limit (number of users K, and the number of antennas N approach
innity) are presented by Schmidt et al. in [128] for the single-beam
MIMO setting (N N, 1)
K
when K = 2N 1 where the feasibility
condition (4.3) for linear interference alignment is tight and com-
pared with K = N when simple zero-forcing can be used. Max-SINR
algorithm is found to outperform alignment and zero-forcing schemes.
A common limitation of algorithmic linear interference alignment
approaches is the need to specify a-priori the values d
k
, i.e., the number
of signaling dimensions to be allocated to each user. The algorithms are
designed to perform well only if the desired allocation is feasible, failing
which no performance optimization is attempted. Recent progress in
this direction comes from [112] which seeks to maximize the number of
accessible dimensions even when the requested allocation is infeasible.
Another interesting approach comes from reference [124] which circum-
vents the problem of choosing d
k
by optimizing directly over the users
input covariance matrices instead, and is shown to perform well in
terms of data rates.
In general, the optimization of linear precoders and combining lters
to maximize the sum-rate in an interference network, remains very
much an open problem of great practical signicance, especially at
intermediate values of SNR. The problem is made even more challeng-
ing in light of the potential benets of symbol extensions, inseparability
of parallel channels and asymmetric complex signaling schemes, all of
which fall within the class of linear beamforming schemes. In the next
few sections, we explore each of these ideas in detail.
4.2 Symbol Extensions
Linear interference alignment schemes, i.e., those based on spatial
beamforming, operate within the spatial dimensions provided by mul-
tiple antennas at the transmitting and receiving nodes, and seek to
divide those spatial dimensions into separable subspaces to be occu-
pied by interference and desired signals at each receiver. When the
number of antennas at each node is insucient, e.g., when each node is
equipped with only one antenna, spatial interference alignment schemes
do not nd a vector space large enough to function. Further, since
the number of beams must be an integer, purely spatial beamform-
ing based interference alignment schemes can only achieve an inte-
gral number of signal dimensions per message per channel use. This
was initially not seen as a limitation, especially since the maximum
number of signaling dimensions (DoF) for all previously considered
wireless networks (MIMO point to point [41, 142], MAC [147], BC
[151, 152, 165], and two user interference channels [65]) were known to
be integer values. The point to point MIMO channel with M trans-
mit, N receive antennas has min(M, N) DoF, the two user MIMO
MAC with M
1
, M
2
transmit antennas and N receive antennas has
min(M
1
+ M
2
, N) DoF, the two user MIMO BC with M transmit
antennas and N
1
, N
2
receive antennas has min(M, N
1
+ N
2
) DoF, and
the two user MIMO Interference Channel with M
1
, M
2
antennas at
the transmitters and N
1
, N
2
antennas at their corresponding receivers,
has min(M
1
+ M
2
, N
1
+ N
2
, max(M
1
, N
2
), max(M
2
, N
1
)) DoF, all of
which are integer values and all of which can be achieved by spatial
beamforming.
The idea of using symbol extensions, i.e., beamforming across
multiple channel uses, was introduced in [67] for the two user MIMO X
channel where all nodes are equipped with M > 1 antennas. Using sym-
bol extensions [67] enlarged the achievable DoF of the two user MIMO
X channel from the
4
3
M| DoF previously achieved by [92] to
4
3
M,
which also matched the outer bound for this class of channels. Thus,
for example, the two user X channel with M = 2 antennas at each node
was shown to have exactly 8/3 DoF, and achievability was established
by using linear beamforming across three channel uses. Specically,
over three channel uses, the size of the total signal space at each node
is increased to 6 dimensions. Two independent symbols are sent for each
of the four independent messages in the two user X channel. At each
receiver, the four desired symbols (two from each transmitter) occupy
a total of four signal dimensions while the remaining two signal dimen-
sions are set aside for aligned interference from both transmitters. Since
a total of eight information symbols are sent over three channel uses in
a manner that allows each symbol to be resolved from interference at
its desired receiver, the achieved DoF equal 8/3. In parallel with the X
channel [67], the idea of beamforming over symbol extensions was also
introduced in the MISO compound BC setting in [159].
4.3 Asymmetric Complex Signaling
Symbol extensions increase the dimensionality of the vector space
making it possible to access fractional signal dimensions through beam-
forming schemes, e.g., a one dimensional signal sent over three channel
uses occupies only one-third signal dimensions. However, symbol exten-
sions over constant channels do not automatically provide the diversity
of linear transformations that is needed for linear interference align-
ment. This is especially evident for networks with only single antenna
nodes. Symbol extensions over constant channel values in this setting
only create channel matrices that are scaled identity matrices. Thus,
any beamforming vector V sent by the transmitter in this larger space
maintains an identical direction at each receiver, diering from one
receiver to another only by a scaling factor. The lack of rotations
ensures that the alignment of vector spaces is identical at each receiver,
thus preventing the relativity of alignment necessary for linear inter-
ference alignment schemes. When dealing with complex numbers, i.e.,
when all channel coecients, transmitted and received symbols as well
as the noise are complex variables, a remedy to nd distinct rotations
is to exploit the phase rotations, i.e., the distinct phase-shifts inherent
in the multiplication of complex scalars which can be seen as rotations
in the two-dimensional real-imaginary plane. This is the idea of asym-
metric complex signaling, introduced in [27]. We summarize the idea
below using the X channel as an example.
Consider the two user X channel where each node is equipped with
only M = 1 antenna. This channel has
4
3
DoF. The solution for the
case where each node is equipped with M = 3 antennas is illustrated
in Figure 3.2. With only one antenna at each node the rst thought,
especially in light of the preceding discussion on symbol extensions,
would be to use linear beamforming over three symbols. This gives
us a three dimensional space at each node, much like the case where
each node is equipped with three antennas. However, this does not
immediately solve the problem. The resulting 3 3 channel matrix
H
[rt]
= h
[rt]
I, i.e., each channel matrix is a scaled version of the identity
matrix. Following Figure 3.2 the received signals at Receiver 1 can be
expressed as:
H
[12]
(H
[22]
)
1
S
[2]
x
12
+ H
[11]
(H
[21]
)
1
S
[2]
x
11
+ S
[1]
(x
22
+ x
21
)
= S
[2]
_
h
[12]
h
[22]
x
12
+
h
[11]
h
[21]
x
11
_
+ S
[1]
(x
22
+ x
21
),
i.e., both desired signals are aligned along S
[2]
and both undesired sig-
nals are aligned along S
[1]
. Since the two desired signals occupy the
same dimension, this approach fails. To see how this problem can be
avoided, consider an information symbol, say x, that is being transmit-
ted along a beamforming vector, say V, so that the transmitted signal
is Vx. Since all symbols are complex, and each complex dimension can
be seen as two real dimensions, let us think of x = x
1
+ jx
2
, where x
1
and x
2
are the two real components of complex symbol x, respectively.
Suppose x
1
and x
2
are independently encoded symbols. Then both
these symbols are being sent along the same beamforming vector V, an
artifact of the common assumption that transmitted signals are proper
(circularly symmetric) Gaussians or, more generally, are drawn from
symmetric constellations. Instead, let us choose dierent beamforming
vectors for x
1
and x
2
, so that the transmitted signal is V
1
x
1
+ V
2
x
2
.
This is the key to asymmetric complex signaling.
With this new insight, we interpret the three complex signaling
dimensions obtained by symbol extensions as 6 real signaling dimen-
sions and remove certain unnecessary symmetries. Specically, pick
two interference alignment vectors at each receiver, so that Receiver 1
requires interference to align along S
[1]
1
, S
[1]
2
and Receiver 2 requires
interference to align along S
[2]
1
, S
[2]
2
. Each S
[i]
j
is a 3 1 vector with
complex elements or equivalently a 6 1 vector with real elements if
we separate the real and imaginary parts and stack them vertically.
All S
[i]
j
are chosen as generic vectors, i.e., generated from a continuous
distribution, so that they are linearly independent almost surely. The
transmitted signals are then composed as:
Transmitter 1:
1
h
[21]
(S
[2]
1
x
11,1
+ S
[2]
2
x
11,2
)
+
1
h
[11]
(S
[1]
1
x
21,1
+ S
[1]
2
x
21,2
) (4.4)
Transmitter 2:
1
h
[12]
(S
[1]
1
x
22,1
+ S
[1]
2
x
22,2
)
+
1
h
[22]
(S
[2]
1
x
12,1
+ S
[2]
2
x
12,2
). (4.5)
So that the received signal at, say Receiver 1, becomes:
S
[1]
1
(x
21,1
+ x
22,1
) + S
[1]
2
(x
21,2
+ x
22,2
) + S
[2]
1
_
h
[11]
h
[21]
x
11,1
+
h
[12]
h
[22]
x
12,1
_
+S
[2]
2
_
h
[11]
h
[21]
x
11,2
+
h
[12]
h
[22]
x
12,2
_
. (4.6)
Thus, out of the six real signaling dimensions available at Receiver 1,
interference aligns along the two real signaling dimensions S
[1]
1
, S
[1]
2
. The
remaining four desired real symbols can be resolved from the remaining
four real signal dimensions if and only if:
[11]

[21]
,=
[12]

[22]
+ n for some n Z, (4.7)
where h
[ij]
= [h
[ij]
[e
j
[ij]
, i.e.,
[ij]
is the phase of the channel coecient
h
[ij]
. Thus, using asymmetric complex signaling it is shown in [27] that
if (4.7) is satised as it will be almost surely for generic channels
then the X channel with only one antenna at each node achieves 4/3
complex DoF (which is also the outer bound) with linear interference
alignment.
Besides the X channel where it achieves the DoF outer bound, asym-
metric complex signaling is used for the three user interference channel
with single antenna nodes and constant channel coecient values [27],
and for the compound MISO BC in [52]. In general, while it increases
the scope of linear interference alignment schemes, in many cases it
does not suce to achieve the DoF outer bound that might other-
wise be achievable through more sophisticated interference alignment
schemes. The limitation of asymmetric complex signaling comes from
the observation that splitting a complex number into its real elements
only provides us two dimensions within which signal vectors may be
rotated. An important consequence of this is that if V is some generic
vector of complex coecients and h
1
, h
2
are generic complex scalars,
then as shown in [27],
1. The two vectors V and h
1
V are almost surely linearly inde-
pendent over reals (if
1
V +
2
h
1
V = 0,
1
,
2
R, then
1
,
2
must be zero).
2. The three vectors V, h
1
V, h
2
V are almost surely not linearly
independent over reals.
Thus, a phase rotation through multiplication with a complex scalar
provides a linearly independent dimension over reals, but any fur-
ther phase rotations through multiplications with complex scalars only
create linearly dependent dimensions. For the interference channel this
limitation translates into the constraint that any signal vector can align
with interference at no more than 1 unintended receiver [27]. But even
in the three user interference channel each signal vector is seen by two
unintended receivers. To elaborate on this limitation further, consider
signal vectors V
1
, V
2
, V
3
originating at transmitters 1, 2, 3, respectively,
in a three user interference channel with constant, complex channel
coecients. Ideally, we would like for V
2
to align with V
3
at Receiver
1, and with V
1
at Receiver 3. Since the channel is simply a complex
constant, the received versions of the transmitted vectors are simply
complex scaled versions of the transmitted vectors. So, if the desired
alignments were to occur, then V
1
, V
2
, V
3
must be the same vector
up to scaling by complex eective channel coecients. As mentioned
above, three complex scaled versions of the same vector cannot be lin-
early independent over reals. This would create a problem at Receiver 2,
because as far as Receiver 2 is concerned, the desired signal vector V
2
will almost surely lie in the span of the interference vectors V
1
and V
3
,
and hence will not be resolvable.
As a consequence of the limitation described above, the maximum
achievable DoFfor the three user interference channel withsingle antenna
nodes, using linear interference alignment and asymmetric complex sig-
naling is limited to only 6/5. To see intuitively how this fraction 6/5
comes about, let us reason as follows. Consider a signal vector originat-
ing at Transmitter 1. At his desired receiver, this symbol must remain
resolvable, so it must occupy one signal dimension. At one of the two
remaining receivers, the symbol can align with an interfering symbol, i.e.,
it can share the same dimension with another symbol, so that it occu-
pies only 0.5 signal dimension. At the last remaining receiver, however,
this symbol cannot align with interference because of the limitation of
asymmetric complex signaling discussed above. Therefore it will occupy
one signal dimension at the last receiver. Summing up the signal dimen-
sions occupied at all receivers by this signal vector, we nd that this one
signal vector casts a shadow of 2.5 signal dimensions at the receivers.
A symmetric replication of this argument would conclude that each sig-
nal vector casts a shadow of no less than 2.5 signal dimensions that can
be uniquely attributed to it. Thus, the DoF per user cannot be more
than 1/2.5. Equivalently, the total DoF of three users cannot be more
than 3/2.5, i.e., 6/5. While this is still interesting, since 6/5 > 1, i.e., it
beats any orthogonal access scheme, it falls short of the DoF outer bound
of 3/2 for the three user interference channel.
There is a broader insight revealed by the asymmetric complex sig-
naling scheme, which has to do with the issue of proper versus improper
Gaussian input distributions as well as with the need for symbol exten-
sions.
1
The optimization of linear precoders under the assumption of
Gaussian codebooks and treating interference as noise is the subject
of a number of works under a variety of settings ranging from MIMO
point to point, MAC, BC, and interference channels. Invariably the
assumption is that the codebooks are proper (circularly symmetric)
Gaussian codebooks. Since proper Gaussians are completely charac-
terized by a covariance matrix (as usual we assume zero mean input
distributions without loss of generality), the linear precoding optimiza-
tion problem translates into the input covariance matrix optimiza-
tion. The design of beamforming vectors is subsumed into the input
covariance matrix optimization as well. Along with the more general
class of improper Gaussians, symbol extensions are mostly ignored.
These assumptions are guided by the conventional wisdom that chan-
nel extensions and improper Gaussians do not help, which in turn may
be attributed to the well-known optimality of proper Gaussians with-
out the need for symbol extensions for capacity achieving schemes in
MIMO point to point, MAC and BC networks, i.e., all cases where
capacity is known. However, the new insight from asymmetric complex
signaling [27] shows that for settings where interference alignment is
a possibility, improper Gaussians, along with symbol extensions, can
outperform proper Gaussians, within the context of linear precoding
schemes where all interference is treated as noise. Improper Gaussians
need both covariance and pseudo-covariance matrix for a complete
characterization. Thus, jointly considering more than one channel use,
and by optimizing the pseudo-covariance matrix in addition to the
covariance matrix, the resulting linear precoding schemes signicantly
1
A complex n 1 random vector A= A
R
+ jA
I
is said to be proper if its pseudo-
covariance matrix, E[(A E[A])(A E[A])
T
] = 0. Note the use of only transpose instead
of conjugate-transpose in the denition of the pseudo-covariance matrix. Proper Gaussian
vectors are also called circularly symmetric.
outperform the single-channel use transmit covariance matrix optimiza-
tion schemes. To the best of our knowledge such optimizations have
not been attempted, and oer an interesting and wide open research
avenue.
4.4 Channel Variations: Separability
Channel variations in both temporal and frequency dimensions
are an essential feature of wireless networks. The (ergodic) capacity
of the time-varying point-to-point wireless channel is known to be the
average of the capacities of the individual channel states subject to
optimal power allocation (water-lling) across channel states [46]. The
same is true for MIMO point to point, MAC and BC channels [45]. The
general intuition from these results is that the whole is equal to the sum
of its parts, i.e., the capacity of a varying channel can be achieved by
achieving capacity individually for each xed channel state. In other
words, from a capacity perspective, there is no need to jointly code
across channel states. This is known as the separability property of
fading MIMO point to point, MAC and BC channels.
Starting with [24] several recent works [25, 34, 126] have established
that the separability property is more of an exception than a rule for
wireless networks in general and interference networks in particular.
Two key causes for inseparability are highlighted in Figure 4.1(a) and
Figure 4.1(b) and explained below. Note that we dene a network to
be sum-capacity-separable if and only if it is sum-capacity-separable
for all possible realizations of channel states i.e., if for all possible
choices of channel coecient values the sum capacity of the network
can be expressed as the sum of the sum-capacities of channel states
(subject to optimal power allocation across states).
Causes for Inseparability
1. Antidote Links: Figure 4.1(a) shows two inseparable states
of the two user interference channel. In the blue channel
state there are no links between desired transmitterreceiver
pairs, which make the capacity of this state zero. However,
the cross link can still be used to deliver the antidote to
Fig. 4.1 Causes for inseparability (a) antidote links (b) interference alignment. All chan-
nel coecients shown are equal to unity for these two examples.
the interference that will be seen in the red channel state.
Thus, the red and blue channel states that by themselves can
only achieve 1 and 0 DoF, respectively, taken together can
achieve 2 DoF, i.e., the whole is more than the sum of its
parts. More generally, the example shows that the presence
of links that cannot carry desired messages always makes a
network inseparable. Remarkably the states of Figure 4.1(a)
are separable from a sum-capacity perspective if the cross
link can also carry a message, e.g., if we consider this to be
an X channel instead of an interference channel [25].
2. Interference Alignment: Figure 4.1(b) shows three insepara-
ble states of an X channel. In an X channel since there is
a desired message from each transmitter to each receiver,
all links can be used to send desired information. How-
ever, because of interference alignment this network is also
not separable. While each state by itself has only 1 DoF
(i.e., does not allow interference alignment), the three states
together allow 4 DoF due to interference alignment [25].
Thus, once again the sum-capacity of the three states taken
together is more than the sum of the sum-capacities of each.
Fig. 4.2 The MAC-Z-BC network [25] is sum-capacity separable over any arbitrary set of
states. It is the only one-hop wireless network to have this property.
Identifying these two causes of sum-capacity-inseparability allows ref-
erence [25] to show that all single hop wireless network topologies are
sum-capacity-inseparable, with the exception of the MAC-Z-BC network
shown in Figure 4.2. What makes the MAC-Z-BCnetwork unique is that
it is the only network that has no antidote links (there is a desired mes-
sage fromevery transmitter to every receiver) and does not allowthe pos-
sibility of interference alignment since the BC channel from the red
transmitter will serve only the stronger of the green receivers for sum-
capacity, the maximum number of undesired messages for the orange
receiver is only 1. The result is shown rigorously in [25] where also the
sum-capacity of the MAC-Z-BC network is derived for arbitrary channel
state values. Note that since the network is separable, the sum-capacity
for the time-varying/frequency-selective setting is also automatically
solved. The sum-capacity separability of the MAC, BC, and Z channels
is also implied by the sum-capacity-separability of the MAC-Z-BC net-
work because these networks can be simply produced by setting appro-
priate channel coecient values to zero. It is also worth pointing out that
even the MAC-Z-BCnetwork is not separable froma capacity region per-
spective. From the entire capacity region perspective, the MAC and the
BCare the only separable one-hop wireless networks.
The inseparability of wireless networks is signicant in that nding
the capacity of an inseparable interference network with xed channel
state would still leave the capacity of the same interference network
under time/frequency selective conditions open. As it turns out this is
the case for all wireless networks except the MAC-Z-BC network.
As shown by the X channel example in Figure 4.1(b), channel
variations across dierent states play an important role in making
interference alignment feasible even when it would be impossible over
any given channel state. Incidentally, the rst use of channel varia-
tions for interference alignment is also in the context of the X channel
in [67]. In light of the previous section, the channel variations provide
additional diversity which is very helpful in particular for linear inter-
ference alignment schemes. Even with single antenna nodes, symbol
extensions across varying channel states create channel matrices that
are diagonal but not scaled identity matrices. Since diagonal matrices
do rotate the beamforming vectors, and these rotations are dierent for
each transmitterreceiver pair, this creates the relativity of alignment
needed for interference alignment.
An elegant study of the limited diversity provided by channel vari-
ations across a nite set of states, and its impact on the feasibility of
linear interference alignment, is provided by Bresler and Tse in [20].
The key observation is that for generic channels H
i
of diversity D
(e.g., signaling over multiple carriers with up to D/2 independent car-
riers, each carrying two dimensional, i.e., complex signals) the vectors
V, H
1
V, H
2
V, . . . , H
N1
V are almost surely linearly independent over
reals only for N 2D D/2| 1 and are almost surely dependent
otherwise. For instance, the asymmetric complex setting discussed in
the previous section can be seen as allowing diversity order 2, and there-
fore, as pointed out earlier, V, hV are almost surely linearly indepen-
dent over reals while V, h
1
V, h
2
V are almost surely linearly dependent
over real dimensions. Bresler and Tse study in particular the three user
interference channel with single antenna nodes where they show that
with diversity order D, the maximum achievable DoF with linear inter-
ference alignment is limited to 3D/2D + 1. As a sanity check, we note
that this coincides with the 6/5 DoF limit observed with asymmetric
complex signaling in [27] for the same setting (where D = 2).
The inseparability of parallel interference networks is also quite
signicant from a practical perspective. For instance, OFDMA based
multi-cell systems naturally correspond to parallel interference net-
works for each sub-carrier. Current resource allocation schemes follow a
separation based approach where each subcarrier is treated separately.
4.5 Ergodic Interference Alignment 37
However, due to the inseparability of parallel interference channels,
performance improvements are possible through joint coding across
sub-carriers. Da and Zhang show in [35] that these gains are most sig-
nicant for cell-edge users who experience comparable signal strengths
from their desired and interfering base stations, prompting a hybrid
scheme whereby interference alignment is used for cell-edge users and
conventional resource allocation is used for users closer to their desired
base stations.
The topic of linear interference alignment over time-varying or
frequency-selective channels is discussed in greater detail in the next
two sections.
4.5 Ergodic Interference Alignment
Consider the following two states of a three user interference channel:
H
a
=
_
_
1 1 1
1 1 1
1 1 1
_
_
H
b
=
_
_
1 1 1
1 1 1
1 1 1
_
_
, (4.8)
where in each state, the (i, j)th element of the channel matrix represents
the channel fading coecient between Transmitter j and Receiver i.
This is the original example presented in [24] to establish the insep-
arability of interference channels due to the possibility of interference
alignment by coding across states even when each state by itself does
not allow interference alignment. Specically, if each transmitter is
restricted to a power constraint P and the local noise power at each
receiver is normalized to unity, then each channel state by itself has
a sum capacity log(1 + 3P) while the sum-capacity with joint cod-
ing across the two states is 3log(1 + 2P). The key property here is the
complementary nature of the two channel states, in that H
a
+ H
b
= 2I.
If each transmitter repeats the same symbol over the two channel states
and each receiver adds the channel outputs from the two channel states,
then all interference is automatically cancelled (and the desired signals
combine coherently). Note that it is because all interference is aligned
along the vector [1 1]
T
while the desired signal is received along the
vector [1 1]
T
that the two can be separated.
This idea leads to an opportunistic interference alignment scheme
proposed in [101] that pairs complementary channel states to naturally
cancel interference by simple repetition coding across the complemen-
tary state pairs. Specically, for each fading channel state H there
is a complementary channel state H
c
such that the desired chan-
nels stay the same while the undesired channels change polarity, i.e.,
H(i, i) = H
c
(i, i) and H(j, k) = H
c
(j, k), j ,= k. In [101], Nazer et al.
show that for a broad class of channel distributions where the channel
coecients are drawn independently of each other and in time and sat-
isfy a symmetry condition (that the channel probability density assigns
equal weight to the two polarities associated with each channel fade
value, i.e., p
H
j,k
(h) = p
H(j,k)
(h)), it is possible for each user to achieve
the same rate as if he was allowed to transmit with no interference for
one-half of the time, regardless of the number of users, and regardless
of the SNR values (the latter is especially signicant, since the benets
of many interference alignment schemes are only realized at asymptot-
ically high SNR values). Since channel fades are drawn from a continu-
ous distribution which makes the probability of any given channel state
equal to zero, Nazer et al. rst quantize the channel states and then use
a strong typicality argument to show that if the channel fading process
is ergodic then almost all quantized states are matched with comple-
mentary states, i.e., the fraction of unmatched states approaches zero.
Because of the reliance on the ergodic fading property, this approach
is called ergodic interference alignment.
The ergodic interference alignment scheme [101] shows that in a K
user interference channel each user can simultaneously achieve a rate
equal to his TDMA-1/2 rate, i.e., the rate he could achieve if allowed to
transmit with no interference for half the time. It is shown in [69] that
this is also the best rate possible in the presence of equal strength inter-
ferers, i.e., interference that is as strong as the desired signal. Specif-
ically, [69] shows that equal strength interferers act as bottlenecks on
the sum-capacity of the interference channel in the sense that the pres-
ence of a relatively small number of equal-strength interference carrying
links is enough to limit the capacity per user to the TDMA-1/2 rate
regardless of the strengths of the remaining interference-carrying links.
Since ergodic interference alignment achieves this rate, it allows an
4.6 An Asymptotic Interference Alignment Scheme [CJ08] 39
exact sum-capacity characterization for a number of K user interfer-
ence network scenarios called bottleneck states. Further, [69] shows that
in a dense network (with identical desired channel strengths) there are
enough bottleneck links that the capacity per user converges in prob-
ability to the rate guaranteed by ergodic interference alignment. The
result is strengthened to less symmetric forms of dense networks, e.g.,
with random node placements, in [1, 72].
Ergodic interference alignment schemes for settings with general
message sets (e.g., the X channel) are presented in [102]. Ergodic
interference alignment is the basis for the inner bounds on the n n-
dimensional unicast and n 2
n
-dimensional multicast capacity regions
of dense wireless networks with arbitrary (deterministic) node place-
ment, that are shown to be tight within O(log(n)) in [105]. Ergodic
interference alignment schemes are also presented over nite eld
models in [70, 101].
While ergodic interference alignment schemes are remarkably simple
from a coding perspective, and even optimal at any SNR for a broad
class of settings, an important limitation of ergodic interference align-
ment is the delay involved in waiting for complementary states. This
delay grows with the number of users as O(c
K
2
) and, to a certain
extent, can be traded-o against the data rate by enlarging the set of
acceptable complementary channel states, as shown in [73, 81].
4.6 An Asymptotic Interference Alignment
Scheme [CJ08]
The ergodic interference alignment scheme discussed in the previous
section is an opportunistic scheme that exploits the existence of com-
plementary channel states in equal proportions to achieve linear inter-
ference alignment. While this assumption applies to a broad variety of
channel distributions, including widely studied Rayleigh fading mod-
els, it is not universally applicable. Arbitrary channel distributions, or
even standard ones like Rician fading, do not satisfy the symmetric
phase assumptions made by ergodic interference alignment. This leaves
open the question how can interference alignment be achieved with
generic channel distributions, i.e., channel distributions with no special
guarantees except that they are well-behaved (continuous). This ques-
tion brings us to an asymptotic interference alignment scheme proposed
in [22], that is the topic of this section. Since there are many alignment
schemes that have an asymptotic character (including the ergodic inter-
ference alignment scheme) in one dimension or another, we will iden-
tify the asymptotic interference alignment scheme of [22] as the [CJ08]
scheme. This scheme is primarily of theoretical interest because of its
strongly asymptotic character which limits its practical use. However,
as we will see in the remainder of this monograph, it is one of the most
powerful theoretical interference alignment constructions in the sense
that
1. It allows us to satisfy an arbitrarily large number of align-
ment constraints without compromising on the fraction of
signal space available to each user as the number of users
increases (with very mild assumptions on the channel distri-
butions).
2. It is applicable in both linear and nonlinear (real alignment
over rational dimensions) forms.
3. It is applicable to a variety of scenarios ranging from K-user
interference channels, X networks, compound BC channels,
cellular networks, and network coding applications including
the distributed data storage repair problem.
4.6.1 Essential Construction of [CJ08] Asymptotic Alignment
Scheme
The key to satisfying an arbitrarily large number of alignment con-
straints is a mechanism proposed in [22] by which a set is constructed
to be almost invariant to an arbitrarily large number of linear trans-
formations. We rst explain this essential construction.
Problem Statement: We are given an arbitrary number N of linear
transformations T
1
, T
2
, . . . , T
N
. Our goal is to construct a set V
of nite cardinality. The linear transformations T
i
are dened to
act elementwise on the set V = v
1
, v
2
, . . . , v
|V|
to produce the set
T
i
V = T
i
v
1
, T
i
v
2
, . . . , T
i
v
|V|
and are assumed to be commutative,
i.e., T
i
T
j
v
k
= T
j
T
i
v
k
, but are otherwise generic.
2
Construct a set V
consisting of only nonzero elements, such that
[J[
[V[
1, (4.9)
where
J

= V T
1
V T
2
V T
N
V (4.10)
and the approaching 1 notation is used to mean that for any > 0
we should be able to nd a set V such that
|I|
|V|
< 1 + .
Solution [CJ08] Scheme
Simply put, our goal is to construct V so that
V T
1
V T
2
V T
N
V, (4.11)
i.e., in an approximate sense, V is invariant to the scaling factors
T
1
, . . . , T
N
. In other words, all the linear transformations of the set
V align with the original set V.
To gain intuition into the solution, let us start with a simple
example where all linear transformations as well as the elements of
V are scalars. Suppose N = 1, T
1
= 2, V = 1, 5, 7. Then we have
J = 1, 5, 7, 2, 10, 14 = 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 14, [V[ = 3, [J[ = 6. Thus, an
arbitrary choice of V is, in general, not good.
Consider again the setting N = 1, an arbitrary T
1
and choose
V = w, T
1
w, (T
1
)
2
w, . . . , (T
1
)
n1
w, where w is an arbitrary
non zero scalar, so that T
1
V = T
1
w, (T
1
)
2
w, . . . , (T
1
)
n
w and
J = w, T
1
w, (T
1
)
2
w, . . . , (T
1
)
n
w. Now [V[ = n, [J[ = n + 1 and
|I|
|V|
=
n+1
n
1 by choosing n large enough. Evidently, the powers of
T
i
are the key to the solution. With this intuition, we now consider the
general problem.
The solution provided by the [CJ08] scheme is summarized in
Figure 4.3 as an iterative loop with a unit delay. In a nutshell, starting
with the set V
1
= w, where w is a generic non zero element, we go
2
By otherwise generic, here we mean that the transformations T
i
do not satisfy any
other special property besides commutativity.
Fig. 4.3 The Construction of V according to the [CJ08] scheme.
through the loop of Figure 4.3 a total of n times to obtain the set V
n
which satises (4.9) as n . To see this explicitly, let us start with
V
1
= 1, i.e., a single column vector with all elements equal to unity.
This produces the set
J
1
= 1, T
1
1, T
2
1, . . . , T
N
1. (4.12)
Clearly at this point the alignment is poor. While the set V
1
has car-
dinality only 1, the set J
1
has N + 1 elements.
Setting V
2
= J
1
, we go through another iteration to obtain the
new set
J
2
= 1, . . . , T
i
1, . . . , T
i
T
j
1, . . . , T
2
i
1. (4.13)
In other words, J
2
contains all product terms of T
i
with overall degree
2. The alignment is still poor. However, let us continue this iteration
n times so that
V
n
= (T
1
)
1
(T
2
)
2
(T
N
)
N
1,
s. t.
N
i=1
i
n 1, (4.14)
1
, . . . ,
N
Z
+

and
J
n
= (T
1
)
1
(T
2
)
2
(T
N
)
N
1,
s. t.
N
i=1
i
n, (4.15)
1
, . . . ,
N
Z
+
Thus, V
n
contains product terms up to degree n, while J
n
contains
product terms up to degree n + 1. The number of column vectors in
V
n
and J
n
, respectively, is
[V
n
[ =
_
n + N 1
N
_
(4.16)
[J
n
[ =
_
n + N
N
_
. (4.17)
Therefore
[V
n
[
[J
n
[
=
n
n + N
1 (4.18)
as n . Since V
n
and J
n
have approximately the same size as
n , and since V
n
is always contained inside J
n
, we have achieved
almost perfect interference alignment J V asymptotically.
The key to the alignment, J V, is the commutative property of
the linear transformations T
i
. Without the commutative property, [V
n
[
would not be able to catch up with [J
n
[. To see this, consider any
term in J
n
. Starting with w, this term can be seen as resulting from
traversing the loop of Figure 4.3 a total of n times, each time choosing
one of the N + 1 parallel branches to cross over fromV to J. The reason
that the size of J
n
does not grow too quickly is because all permutations
of the n choices made over this period produce the same output. For
example, starting with w if we choose T
1
the rst time we traverse
the loop, T
2
the second time, and T
3
the third time, the resulting
term would be T
3
T
2
T
1
w. A dierent order of choices, say T
2
, T
3
, T
1
respectively, would not produce a distinct term only because the T
i
satisfy the commutative property. Thus, six dierent orders in which
we could have chosen T
1
, T
2
, T
3
in traversing the loop three times, all
produce the same term in J
3
. Extending this argument to n iterations,
it is clear that the commutative property is what keeps the size of J
n
from growing too quickly, so that ultimately, V
n
is able to catch up
with it, and we achieve alignment J
n
V
n
asymptotically as n .
Next we explain how this essential construction is used to achieve
interference alignment in the K user interference channel the original
setting of [22]. Other applications will be pointed out in detail in later
sections.
4.6.2 Application to K-user Interference Channel
with Time-varying Channel Coecients
The original setting for the [CJ08] asymptotic interference alignment
scheme is the time-varying or frequency-selective Gaussian interfer-
ence channel where K transmitterreceiver pairs, labeled as users
0, 1, . . . , K 1 wish to communicate K independent messages, one from
each transmitter to its corresponding receiver, over the same wire-
less medium. For a detailed setup of this problem we refer the reader
to [22]. For this review summary we highlight only certain interesting
aspects and simplications. With our notation, the received signal at
Receiver 0 is expressed as (the description applies to both real and
complex settings):
Y
[0]
= H
[00]
X
[0]
+
K1
i=1
T
i
X
[i]
+ Z
[0]
, (4.19)
where H
[kk]
is the desired channel and T
i
enumerate the interference-
carrying channels. Z
[k]
A(0, I) are the additive white Gaussian noise
terms. Similarly, the received signal at Receiver 1 is expressed as:
Y
[1]
= H
[11]
X
[1]
+
K1
i=1
T
K1+i
X
[i+1]
+ Z
[1]
(4.20)
Note that all the superscripts in square parantheses are meant in the
mod-K sense. Thus, e.g., X
[K]
= X
[0]
. Received signals at all other
receivers are dened similarly.
The observant reader will note that there are a total of
N = K(K 1) normalized channels (T
1
, T
2
, . . . , T
K(K1)
) carrying
interference signals. Some simplication is possible here, as one could
normalize one of the T
i
for each receiver to the identity transformation
and thereby reduce the number of variables. While such simplications
could improve the eciency of the [CJ08] scheme, in the asymptotic
regime of interest they will be inconsequential. Hence, we adopt the
simpler convention of enumerating all the interference-carrying chan-
nels as linear transformations T
i
.
The interference alignment challenge here is to consolidate the inter-
ference carried by all these channels into a small subspace. In order to
achieve the ultimate goal that everyone gets half the cake
3
we
should be able to align all the interference at every receiver within one-
half of the total signal space available at that receiver, leaving the other
half interference-free for the desired signals. The number of alignment
constraints is clearly increasing as the number of users and, therefore N,
increases. Yet the DoF per user should remain unaected i.e., each
user should continue to be able to access half the signal space free of
interference. In other words, the number N is not important for the
ultimate DoF result. One could potentially make N arbitrarily large,
by adding more interference alignment constraints, e.g., by considering
a nite state compound setting where each users channel can take one
out of nitely many generic values or by adding other ctional users
without aecting the ultimate DoF-fraction available to each user. The
alignment scheme will be able to satisfy an arbitrarily large number of
alignment constraints while still guaranteeing that half the signal space
seen by each receiver will be free from interference and available to the
desired signal. This will be accomplished in an asymptotic sense by
either enlarging the overall dimensionality of the signal space, or split-
ting signaling dimensions into sub-dimensions with increasingly ne
resolution. In other words, the [CJ08] scheme guarantees that everyone
will get half the cake almost surely, provided that either the cake can
be made arbitrarily large, or that it can be cut with arbitrarily ne
precision.
3
The cake represents the capacity achieved by each user individually in the absence of all
interference.
The most important assumption about the interference-carrying
channels is the following.
The commutative property, i.e., T
i
T
j
= T
j
T
i
, i, j
1, 2, . . . , N.
Note that this assumption is obviously satised by the diagonal
channel matrices resulting from symbol extensions over time-varying/
frequency-selective channels.
We will consider a beamforming scheme where each transmitter
sends its information along m linearly independent beamforming vec-
tors. These vectors can be viewed as the columns of an m 1 precoding
matrix V. With some abuse of notation, we will use the symbol V as a
matrix, as a set (with the column vectors as its elements) and also as
the signal subspace spanned by its columns. As a simplication of [22]
we will make the following assumption.
All transmitters use the same set of signaling vec-
tors V.
Each receiver will also set aside (approximately) the
same subspace V for interference.
Remark: The approximation implied in this statement will be inconse-
quential in the asymptotic regime of interest.
With these assumptions in mind, let us account for the interference
space at Receiver 0 (see Figure 4.4). The space associated with inter-
ference at Receiver 0 is the union of the space intentionally set aside
for interference V and the actual space along which interference shows
up at Receiver 0.
J
[0]
= V T
1
V T
2
V T
K1
V. (4.21)
This space is shown in Figure 4.5 as J
[0]
.
Let us collect all the interference space associated with all the
receivers and express it as a larger subspace
J = V T
1
V T
2
V T
N
V (4.22)
Then our interference alignment goal is expressed as:
V T
1
V T
2
V T
N
V (4.23)
Fig. 4.4 Interference seen by Receiver 0.
Fig. 4.5 Interference space at Receiver 0.
The [CJ08] IA scheme essentially aligns all the interference within
the same space V at each receiver. In other words, the goal is to
make J V. From the discussion at the beginning of this section, we
already know how to solve this problem.
While all interference is aligned, an important concern remains
that the desired signal must not overlap with the interference space.
It may be especially concerning at rst to note that each transmitter
is precoding signals into the same signal space V and V is also the
space along which interference aligns at each receiver. However, what
keeps the desired signal distinct from interference is the generic linear
transformation H
[kk]
corresponding to the desired channel. Note that
H
[kk]
does not appear anywhere in the alignment problem described
above, and is therefore independent of the alignment solution V.
Because of this independence the linear transformation H
[kk]
essentially
transforms the desired signal for each receiver into general position
H
[kk]
V relative to the interference space V seen by the receiver. It is
well known that vector subspaces in general position do not overlap if
they exist in an overall space that is large enough to accommodate all
of them. Thus, all that is needed to ensure that the signal and inter-
ference are separable, is that the overall signal space be large enough
to accommodate V and J. This is easily accomplished by choosing the
overall signal space size to be S = [V[ + [J[. With this setting,
span(H
[kk]
V) span(V) = 0 (4.24)
[H
[kk]
V[
S
=
[V[
[V[ + [J[

1
2
(4.25)
as n , and thus everyone gets half the cake.
We summarize the interesting features of the alignment scheme
again as follows.
1. The interference carrying channels T
i
are required to satisfy
the commutative property. Beyond this, they could satisfy
any special property and do not need to be generic.
2. The desired-signal carrying channels H
[kk]
only need to be
suciently generic to transform the desired signals out of
the interference space. In particular these channels are not
required to satisfy the commutative property.
3. All transmitters use the same signal space V.
4. All interference at each receiver is asymptotically aligned
within (approximately) the same space V.
5. The number of alignment constraints N can be arbitrar-
ily large, and still almost perfect interference alignment is
achieved asymptotically over a suciently expanded signal
space.
Finally, to conclude this section, let us roughly estimate the signal space
extension needed by the [CJ08] scheme to approach the limiting value
of half the cake per user. Suppose each user wants to access a fraction
of the cake that is within a small constant of the ideal value 1/2, i.e.,
4.7 Interference Alignment Separability of Rationally Independent Dimensions 49
we want
1
2

[V
n
[
[V
n
[ + [J
n
[
=
1
1 +
|In|
|Vn|
=
1
1 +
n+N
n
. (4.26)
The smallest value of n that satises this condition is
n
=
_
N
_
1
4

1
2
__
. (4.27)
Thus, the total size of the signal space needed is [J
n
[ + [V
n
[ =
_
n
+N
N
_
(1 +
n
+N
). Using Stirlings formula,
_
n
+ N
N
_
N
_
n
+ N
N
_
_
n
+ N
N
_
N
e
N
_
1
4
+
1
2
_
K(K1)
_
2
1 + 2
_
[J
n
[ + [V
n
[
_
e
4
+
e
2
+
e
2K(K 1)
_
K(K1)
_
2 + 4/(K(K 1))
1 + 2 + 2/(K(K 1))
_
,
(4.28)
where we made the substitution N = K(K 1). Thus, for a xed
tolerance around the target value of 1/2 DoF per user, as the num-
ber of users, K, grows, the logarithm of the size of the signal space
needed by the [CJ08] scheme expands as (K
2
). This need for rapid
bandwidth expansion is a sobering observation that underscores the
strongly asymptotic character of the [CJ08] scheme. Everyone can get
arbitrarily close to half of the cake, provided the size of the cake grows
very rapidly with the number of users.
4.7 Interference Alignment Based on Separability
of Rationally Independent Dimensions
The [CJ08] asymptotic interference alignment scheme is originally
introduced for the K user interference channel with time-varying or
frequency-selective channel coecients. The channel variations natu-
rally give rise to diagonal channel matrices which satisfy the com-
mutative property. For constant channels, especially with real channel
coecients, the beamforming approach which separates signal spaces
based on linear independence is not sucient and the DoF problem ini-
tially remained open. Interference alignment over constant channels is
shown to be possible through lattice alignment schemes in the work of
Bresler et al. [18]. The idea is advanced further in [26, 39, 68, 136] lead-
ing most recently to a breakthrough by Motahari et al. in [99] where
the framework for interference alignment along rationally independent
dimensions is established. Because of its close connection to the vec-
tor space alignment framework discussed in the preceding sections, we
rst explore the rational dimensions framework in this section, and
then return to the more distinct forms of lattice alignment in the next
section.
In its details, the concept of rational dimensions introduced in [99],
is far from a trivial extension of the well understood concept of
linear independence, and is built upon recent generalizations of the
Khintchine-Groshev theorem [12] from the eld of Diophantine approx-
imation theory. Yet, the idea of rationally independent dimensions is
intuitively quite similar to the idea of linear independence of vectors.
A set of vectors is considered linearly independent if no nontrivial lin-
ear combination of the vectors can produce the zero vector. Similarly, a
set of scalars is considered to be rationally independent if no nontrivial
rational combination of the scalars i.e., a linear combination with
only rational coecients at least one of which must be nonzero can
add up to zero. Just as signals received along linearly independent vec-
tors are separable, Motahari et al. showed that superimposed lattices
scaled by rationally independent scalars were also separable.
The rational dimension framework of [99] also provides a mechanism
to translate the [CJ08] asymptotic interference alignment solutions
designed for time-varying channels directly to constant channel setting.
Instead of linear precoding through beamforming vectors, lattice codes
scaled by a set of rationally independent scalars are used for signal-
ing. Because scalar channel coecients for cross-channels (interference)
naturally satisfy the commutative property, and the direct channel
coecients are assumed generic, the requirements of [CJ08] scheme
are satised. Thus, within the new framework of rational dimensions,
the [CJ08] scheme is again found to achieve almost perfect asymptotic
4.7 Interference Alignment Separability of Rationally Independent Dimensions 51
alignment, leading to the DoF characterizations for the K user inter-
ference channel for almost all values of channel coecients.
Next we summarize the essential elements of the rational dimensions
framework.
4.7.1 The Rational Dimensions Framework
With the rational dimensions framework, transmitted signals are con-
structed as:
x = (v
1
x
1
+ v
2
x
2
+ + v
d
x
d
) (4.29)
where v
i
are the scalar precoding coecients (whose values are
chosen depending on channel coecient values), [v
i
[
2
= O(1), x
i
0, 1, . . . , Q 1 are coded scalar Q-ary symbols, and is a scaling coef-

cient required to satisfy the power constraint. The precoding coe-
cients v
i
are chosen to be rationally independent at the desired receivers
so that the information streams can be separated along distinct rational
dimensions. Rational independence of v
i
is equivalent to the condition
that
v
1
x
1
+ v
2
x
2
+ + v
d
x
d
= 0 (4.30)
has only one solution for rational values of x
i
, and that is the all-zero
solution.
The separability of rational dimensions is a consequence of the
(extensions of) KhintchineGroshev theorem [10, 12] in Diophantine
approximation theory. The theorem shows that the minimum distance
of the constellation
m
i=1
v
i
x
i
when x
i
0, 1, . . . , Q 1, is at least
O(Q
m1+
)
for almost all rationally independent v
1
, v
2
, . . . , v
m
and any
> 0 (extensions of the theorem show that the statement holds even
when the v
i
lie on a non-degenerate manifold as in the [CJ08] scheme.).
Choosing Q = O(P
1
2(m+)
) and =
P
1/2
Q
ensures that the total trans-
mit power is O(P). With this setting, the minimum distance of the
constellation is greater than the standard deviation of the noise, which
guarantees the separability of coded information streams. The rate pre-
log achieved per stream is
lim
P
log(Q)
0.5log(P)
=
1
m +
. (4.31)
Thus, the real scalar dimension, conventionally thought of as one DoF
(or half a DoF if normalized according to the complex setting) is split
into m rational dimensions, each carrying 1/m DoF.
The rational dimensions framework enabled by Diophantine approx-
imation theory, and in particular the KhintchineGroshev theorem [12]
is a powerful theoretical tool to nd DoF characterizations for net-
works with constant channel coecients. Originally proposed for only
real channel coecients, the framework has recently been extended to
complex channel coecients as well by Maddah-Ali in [93]. The relative
ease with which interference alignment schemes based on conventional
vector space dimensions can be translated into the rational dimen-
sions framework is quite remarkable. The scheme also inherits some
of the limitations of the diophantine approximation theory literature.
For instance, while it is shown by Motahari et al. [99] that almost all
channel coecients are good, i.e., they allow the separability of data
streams sent along fractional rational dimensions, it is not yet possible
to identify a given channel state as good or bad. Thus, e.g., while we
know that almost all states of the K user interference with constant
channel coecients achieve K/2 DoF, for almost all channel states the
DoF of that particular channel state cannot be determined from the
current understanding of rational dimensions. This is mainly because
the KhintchineGroshev theorem that is central to the rational dimen-
sions framework only claims to be applicable to almost all rationally
independent signaling dimensions but provides no means of identify-
ing whether it is applicable to a given choice of rationally independent
signaling dimensions. Lastly, because the theorem only provides O(Q
)
guarantees in the minimum distance of the constellation, without iden-
tifying the constant scaling factor, it is not yet possible to gauge the
performance at any nite SNR.
4.8 Lattice Alignment
The debate between random coding and structured coding approaches
is as old as information theory itself. Remarkably, both theory and prac-
tice have switched sides on the issue of random versus structured codes.
When Shannon theory advocated random coding, practical schemes
were exclusively focused on structured codes that could be decoded
with a reasonable complexity. That debate was essentially won by the-
ory as practical schemes like turbo codes were found to mimic random
coding schemes and thereby approach theoretical limits with reasonable
complexity. In the new debate, the situation is reversed. Recent theo-
retical advances advocate highly sophisticated structured codes while
the achievable rates considered practical draw largely on basic random
coding arguments. Perhaps the strongest case for structured codes, also
the topic of this section, is the idea of lattice alignment.
The main motivation for lattice alignment is the observation that
since the sum of lattice points (codewords) is also a lattice point (a valid
codeword), it may be possible to decode the sum of codewords when
they belong to the same lattice even if the individual codewords by
themselves are not decodable. This is useful when the codewords only
carry undesired information from interfering transmitters, so that the
receiver does not need or wish to decode each codeword individually,
but would like to decode the total eective interference (the sum of
interfering codewords) to obtain a clean (interference-free) observed
signal for its own desired codeword. This is particularly useful in a
strong interference setting where decoding the interference would be
benecial before decoding the desired codeword. As such lattice align-
ment schemes are critical when the information is viewed as layered
across signal levels such as may be seen through the linear deterministic
models of Avestimehr et al. [3].
Lattice alignment, therefore, refers to the use of lattice codes in
an interference network, with the lattices scaled in such a manner that
the undesired signals at an interfered receiver arrive on the same lattice
(so that the sum of interferers is decodable while the individual code-
words are not), and at the same time the desired signal stands apart,
i.e., does not occupy the same lattice, e.g., due to an inconsistent scaling
factor.
The idea of lattice alignment is introduced by Bresler, Parekh and
Tse in [18] for the many-to-one interference channel where only one
receiver experiences interference, and is shown to achieve the capac-
ity of this channel within a constant number of bits/sec/Hz (regard-
less of SNR and channel parameters). The layering of information in
signal levels is an essential aspect of this problem because of the dier-
ent strengths of signals arriving from each interferer to the interfered
receiver.
The rst use of lattice alignment for fully connected interference
channels appears in [26] as a series of examples of real channels with
constant channel coecients that can approach arbitrarily close to the
K/2 DoF outer bound. Etkin and Ordentlich [39] explore the DoF
of fully connected K user interference channel with real and con-
stant channel coecients and discover surprising and fundamental new
insights regarding the distinct behavior of channels with rational versus
irrational channel coecients. In particular, they nd that (a) a fully
connected interference channel with only rational channel coecients
has DoF bounded strictly away from K/2, and (b) that if all desired
channel coecients are irrational and all interference-carrying chan-
nel coecients are rational, then the outer bound of K/2 is achieved.
Together, these results showed the discontinuity of DoF at all fully con-
nected channels with rational coecients. The rst result is based on
a novel outer bounding technique based on additive combinatorics and
is very surprising as perhaps the rst instance of an outer bound that
is sensitive to rationality of channel coecients. The second result of
Etkin and Ordentlich highlights that if cross-links are all rational, then
interference can be made to align on the same integer lattice, while the
irrational nature of direct links ensures that the desired signals stand
apart from the interference. The role of rationality in determining sig-
nal dimensions was developed further Motahari et al. in [99], leading
to the rational dimensions framework described in the previous sec-
tion. Another intriguing development in this direction is the casting
of the DoF problem in terms of Renyi information dimensions by Wu
et al. in [161]. Specically, Wu et al. provide a general formula for the
DoF of the K-user real-additive noise interference channel in terms of a
single letter optimization of a linear combination of Renyi information
dimensions, and show that this approach can recover and improve upon
known results with simpler proofs.
While lattice alignment plays a role in determining the DoF in
[26, 39, 99], perhaps the more unique aspects of lattice alignment
become evident in going beyond DoF, to generalized DoF (GDoF, see
Appendix B) characterizations, or even further to capacity character-
izations within a constant gap. It is in these settings that the signal
level dimension plays a central role as some signals are stronger than
others, naturally giving rise to a layered code structure (inspired by the
deterministic approach of [3]) where some interference layers may be
stronger (i.e., received at higher signal levels) than some desired signal
layers. A constructive approach then nds it useful to remove interfer-
ence from stronger layers by decoding and subtracting the aggregate
interference before decoding weaker desired signals.
It is this ability to decode aggregate interference that sets lattice
alignment apart from vector space interference alignment techniques.
Note that interference alignment techniques based on signal vector
spaces may suce for DoF characterizations, especially if the channels
are time-varying and suciently generic, but invariably these tech-
niques do not suce to obtain GDoF characterizations. This is because
vector space alignment techniques typically sacrice entirely the vector
subspace within which interference is consolidated. Evidently when all
signals are equally strong this sacrice tends to be DoF optimal. How-
ever, if the aligned interference does not occupy all signal levels, as is
the case if, e.g., all interferers are very strong, then it is inecient from
a GDoF perspective to sacrice a signal vector dimension where the
unoccupied signal levels could have been used to send the desired signal.
This observation is reinforced in several works. Sridharan et al. [136]
nd a tighter characterization (than possible with random codes) of
the very strong interference condition for a symmetric K user inter-
ference channel where all cross channels are identical, based on lattice
alignment.
In [68], Jafar and Vishwanath nd the GDoF characterization for
a symmetric K user interference channel where all cross channels are
equally strong. Interestingly, the GDoF per user in this setting are the
same as the two user interference channel [19, 40], due to interference
alignment based on lattice codes. Intuitively once interference is
aligned, facing one interferer is the same as facing an arbitrary number
of interferers, especially for the symmetric model where all interferers
are equally strong and each receiver sees the same picture with only
the identities of desired and interference signals changed appropriately.
Bandemer et al. [7] nd the K user interference channel GDoF with a
cyclic interference model where adjacent interferers may have dierent
strengths but the same pattern is repeated in a cyclical fashion. Saha
and Berry in [125] study the sum rate of a class of three user determin-
istic interference channels, which they label as the shoe-string model,
and where there is no interference between two of the users. Note that
the solution of the deterministic channel model capacity problem is typ-
ically the precursor of the GDoF characterization of the corresponding
Gaussian channel model, as evident from, e.g., [7, 19, 58, 68].
Huang et al. [58] nd the GDoF characterization for a symmetric
version of the 2 2 X channel illustrated in Figure 4.6(a). As usual,
the X channel contains four independent messages, W
ij
, i, j 1, 2,
with W
ij
representing the message from Transmitter j to receiver i.
Eliminating either the messages W
12
, W
21
or W
11
, W
22
reduces the X
channel into one of its underlying interference channels with the two
remaining messages. It is well known that the X channel has 4/3 DoF
while the interference channel has only 1 DoF. The DoF setting implic-
itly assumes all channels are equally strong. The GDoF setting allows
us to gauge the benets of the X channel over the underlying inter-
ference channels when some channels are stronger/weaker than oth-
ers. In other words, the problem is of interest primarily as a means
of exploring the benet of interference alignment enabled by the X
channel setting relative to the underlying interference channels, whose
GDoF are well recognized in the form of the familiar W curve of
Etkin et al. [40] for the symmetric setting. There are two interference
Fig. 4.6 X Channel extension of the Symmetric Interference Channel. W
ij
is the message
originating at Transmitter j and intended for Receiver i.
Fig. 4.7 GDoF of Symmetric Interference and X Channels [19, 40, 58, 68].
channels contained in the X channel. From Figure 4.6, it is clear that
eliminating messages W
12
, W
21
, i.e., setting W
12
= W
21
= , produces
the interference channel with messages W
11
, W
22
where SNR values
scale as P and INR values scale as P
. The GDoF curve is given by the

recognizable W curve of Etkin et al. as shown in Figure 4.7. Alter-
natively, eliminating messages W
11
, W
22
, i.e., setting W
11
= W
22
= ,
produces the interference channel with messages W
12
, W
21
where SNR
scales as P
and INR scales as P. The GDoF curve for this interference

channel is also obtained from the W curve of Etkin et al. with the
suitable normalization of SNR and INR scaling factors, and is shown
in Figure 4.7. As evident from Figure 4.7, the symmetric X channel
retains a GDoF advantage over the corresponding symmetric two user
interference channels in the range 2/3 3/2 because of interference
alignment. Another interesting observation from Figure 4.7 is that out
of the two interference channels contained within the X channel, the
channel under weak interference always outperforms the channel under
under strong interference in terms of GDoF. Intuitively, it means that
instead of using the stronger channel to send interference that can be
decoded and cancelled, the better use of the stronger channel is to
send data instead, even if it means that the weaker channel will carry
interference that cannot be removed. As mentioned earlier, for all these
results the key to the GDoF characterization is to solve the determin-
istic model of Avestimehr et al. [3]. An interesting observation is that
even within the signal level dimension that is captured by the determin-
istic channel model, vector space alignment techniques are used to nd
DoF characterizations. On the other hand, deterministic models of [3]
may not be as useful when multiple antennas are involved. In these
cases, such as the (1 N)
N+1
interference channel explored in [53]
(see Appendix B), the necessary insights for GDoF characterizations
may be accessible from a more fundamental deterministic setting
the deterministic interference model of El Gamal and Costa [42].
In addition to the evolution of lattice alignment described above,
there is another research thread, on computation capacity, which orig-
inated as early as 1979 with Korner and Martons work in [82], which
more recently evolved into a class of compute-and-forward schemes due
to Nazer and Gastpars work in [100], and which has naturally incor-
porated lattice alignment principles in its recent applications, such as
[103, 106]. The use of structured codes for distributed dirty paper
coding to achieve the capacity of the double dirty MAC channel, by
Philosof and Zamir in [119], also attributed to a form of lattice align-
ment, is intriguing as well.
In summary, on the one hand lattice codes along with lattice
alignment oer the opportunity to decode and subtract aggregate
interference even when interferers are not individually decodable. This
indicates a strong advantage for structured codes in interference net-
works. On the other hand, because of the sensitivity of lattice align-
ment approaches to channel uncertainty the debate is not entirely over.
If interference alignment is not possible with the amount of channel
uncertainty that is unavoidable in practice, then the advantage of struc-
tured codes may be greatly reduced and random coding approaches may
turn out to be more robust. As a remarkable counterpoint, encouraging
results for robust lattice alignment schemes in the presence of channel
uncertainty are presented by Huang et al. in [60].
Indeed, the robustness of interference alignment to channel uncer-
tainty may be the most critical determinant of its impact on future
wireless networks. The following sections review encouraging results in
this direction.
4.9 Blind Interference Alignment
Blind interference alignment is introduced in [63] as the idea that even if
the actual channel coecient values are entirely unknown to the trans-
mitters, interference alignment may be possible based on the knowledge
of the distinct autocorrelation properties of the channels seen by dier-
ent receivers. As an example consider the two user MISO BC channel
where the transmitter is equipped with two antennas and each receiver
has one antenna. With full channel state information at the transmit-
ter (CSIT) it is clear that the transmitter can send a noninterfering
signal to each user by sending it along a beam orthogonal to the other
users channel vector, and thus 2 DoF are achievable. Without CSIT,
it may seem that no multiplexing of signals is possible and only 1 DoF
can be achieved, as indeed has been conjectured in [86]. If the channels
are statistically indistinguishable then it is easy to see that indeed the
MISO BC is degraded and can achieve only 1 DoF [31]. While block
fading channels are precluded in the setting of [86], the assumption that
the channel stays constant across a few adjacent time and frequency
slots is commonly made in wireless channel models to capture notions
like coherence time and coherence bandwidth. The blind interference
alignment scheme exploits this assumption and the fact that the users
are not statistically equivalent.
On the top left corner of Figure 4.8 is a conceptual depiction of
the physical autocorrelation model for the two users where the change
of colors depicts decorrelation of channel coecients across time and
frequency. Evidently, User 1 has a smaller coherence bandwidth and a
larger coherence time than User 2. Three signal dimensions are chosen
as indicated in the autocorrelation graph, so that User 1s channel state
changes from the rst dimension to the second and then stays constant
from the second to the third, while User 2s channel stays constant
across the rst two dimensions and then changes to a dierent value.
The channel states over the three signaling dimensions are indicated
in the top right corner of Figure 4.8. The bottom half of the gure
shows how a total of four symbols, two for each user, are transmitted
from the two transmit antennas, over the three chosen signaling dimen-
sions. The signaling dimensions are indicated as time slots for ease of
exposition. Since there are four symbols being transmitted over three
signal dimensions it is clear that the two undesired symbols must align
into one dimension for each receiver to be able to recover its own two
desired symbols from the remaining two interference-free dimensions.
With the transmission scheme shown in Figure 4.8, the received
symbols at the two receivers are expressed as follows:
_
_
y
[1]
(1)
y
[1]
(2)
y
[1]
(3)
_
_
=
_
_
h
[1]
1
(1) h
[1]
2
(1) 0 0 0 0
0 0 h
[1]
1
(2) h
[1]
2
(2) 0 0
0 0 0 0 h
[1]
1
(2) h
[1]
2
(2)
_
_
x
[1]
1
x
[1]
2
x
[1]
1
+ x
[1]
2
x
[2]
1
+ x
[2]
2
x
[2]
1
x
[2]
2
_
_
+
_
_
z
[1]
(1)
z
[1]
(2)
z
[1]
(3)
_
_
_
_
y
[2]
(1)
y
[2]
(2)
y
[2]
(3)
_
_
=
_
_
h
[2]
1
(1) h
[2]
2
(1) 0 0 0 0
0 0 h
[2]
1
(1) h
[2]
2
(1) 0 0
0 0 0 0 h
[2]
1
(2) h
[2]
2
(2)
_
_
x
[1]
1
x
[1]
2
x
[1]
1
+ x
[1]
2
x
[2]
1
+ x
[2]
2
x
[2]
1
x
[2]
2
_
_
+
_
_
z
[2]
(1)
z
[2]
(2)
z
[2]
(3)
_
_
.
During time slot 1 the two symbols intended for User 1 are sent
from the two transmit antennas. During time slot 3 the two symbols
intended for User 2 are sent similarly. Each receiver has thus acquired
one linear combination of its desired symbols and one linear combina-
tion of the interfering symbols. The crucial part is time slot 2, where
Fig. 4.8 Blind interference alignment scheme [63] for two user MISO BC or the X channel.
Symbols x
[k]
1
, x
[k]
2
are desired by User k.
the transmitted symbols are a superposition of time slots 1 and 3. For
User 1 this means that during time slot 2, he receives a dierent linear
combination of his desired symbols as in time slot 1 (because his chan-
nel in time slot 2 is dierent from time slot 1) but the same linear
combination of interfering symbols as time slot 3 (because his channel
in time slot 2 is the same as in time slot 3). This allows User 1 to
subtract the linear combination of interfering symbols that is observed
twice and thus he is left with two interference-free dierent linear com-
binations of his own desired symbols from which the two symbols can
be resolved. Similar arguments can be applied to User 2, by symmetry
of construction. Thus, each user is able to eliminate interference and
recover his own two desired symbols. Since this occurs over a total of
3 time slots, the DoF achieved is 4/3. Incidentally this is also the DoF
outer bound for this setting.
There are several interesting aspects of the blind interference align-
ment scheme of Figure 4.8. First, note that no data sharing is needed
between the two transmit antennas. So, the same scheme can be applied
to the X channel setting as well, where instead of a single transmitter
with two antennas, there are two transmitters with a single antenna
each. In fact, Figure 4.8 already depicts the two transmit antennas as
distributed. The second observation is that in order to cancel inter-
ference, the receivers do not need to know the values of the channel
coecients. Of course, one interference is removed, channel knowledge
is needed by the receivers in order to perform coherent detection of
their own desired signals.
Similar blind interference alignment schemes are also shown in [63]
for the two user MIMO interference channel and the K user SISO inter-
ference channel. The two user MIMO interference channel setting is one
where User 1 has one transmit and two receive antennas, while User 2
has three transmit and four receive antennas. With no CSIT at the
users, the question of interest is that if User 1 achieves 1 DoF, what
is the maximum DoF simultaneously achievable by User 2. It is shown
that if User 1s desired channel varies faster than the interfering carry-
ing channel, then 1.5 DoF can be achieved by User 2, which requires
interference alignment. Since without CSIT, Transmitter 2 cannot zero
force its signal at Receiver 1, it must align the 1.5 dimensional signal
into 1 dimension, or equivalently, operating over two time slots, align
the 3 dimensional transmitted signal into 2 dimensions at Receiver 1.
An alternate setting for blind interference alignment is proposed
by Gou et al. in [54] in the form of staggered antenna switching. The
main idea is that channel coherence block patterns can be manipulated
by changing the antenna characteristics in a pre-determined fashion
either through recongurable antennas or through antenna switching.
For the MISO BC with M antennas at the transmitter and K single-
antenna receivers capable of switching blindly among M recongurable
modes, it is shown that the Dof outer bound of
MK
M+K1
is achievable by
staggered mode switching. Note that this is the same as the DoF outer
bound of the X channel obtained by breaking the M transmit antennas
into M single antenna transmitters, and like the example of Figure 4.8,
is also achievable with the distributed transmitters. Therefore, inter-
estingly, the X channel does not lose DoF relative to the perfect CSIT
setting even when no CSIT is present as long as the receivers have the
ability to switch among independent antenna modes. Wang et al. also
extend their results to the MIMO BC setting in [153]. Blind interfer-
ence alignment through staggered antenna switching is explored for the
two user MIMO interference channel by Ke and Wang in [79] and the
achieved DoF are shown to be tight with respect to an outer bound
obtained earlier in [59, 61, 66]. Benets of blind interference align-
ment schemes in cellular settings as well as rate improvements possible
through optimal power allocation are investigated by Wang et al. in
[156, 157].
It should also be noted that if channel autocorrelations across adja-
cent time/frequency slots are ignored through the assumption of i.i.d.
fading, especially when the fading model is isotropic, then the DoF
benets of blind interference alignment are lost. The DoF results for
i.i.d. isotropic fading models are obtained in [59, 148, 166, 167] and in
all cases it is shown that the DoF benets of interference alignment are
lost. Since the realistic fading models are somewhere in between the
i.i.d. fading models of [59, 148, 166, 167] and the block fading mod-
els of [54, 63, 79, 153], the benets of blind interference alignment in
practical settings remain an active research area.
4.10 Retrospective Interference Alignment
Retrospective interference alignment is introduced by Maddah-Ali and
Tse in [94] and refers to interference alignment schemes that exploit
only delayed CSIT. The delayed CSIT is assumed independent of the
current channel state. The general intuition prior to the Maddah-Ali
and Tses work in [94] was that channel knowledge is only useful to the
transmitter to the extent that it helps learn the current channel state.
It is therefore surprising that even delayed CSIT that is independent
of the current channel state is, not only useful, but so useful that it
can increase the available DoF. As an illustrative example, consider
the MISO BC with two antennas at the transmitter and two users with
one receive antenna each. For retrospective interference alignment the
channels can (but do not have to) be i.i.d. isotropic. In the absence
of delayed CSIT, i.i.d. isotropic fading channels would lose all signal
multiplexing benets and only have 1 DoF, as mentioned in the pre-
vious section. However, Maddah-Ali and Tse show that the two user,
Fig. 4.9 Retrospective interference alignment scheme [94] for two user MISO BC. Symbols
x
[k]
1
, x
[k]
2
are desired by User k.
two transmit antenna MISO BC achieves 4/3 DoF, with only delayed
CSIT available at the transmitter. Interestingly, the achievable scheme,
shown in Figure 4.9 is very similar to the blind interference alignment
scheme illustrated in Figure 4.8 if time slots 2 and 3 are switched in
the latter.
In time slot 1, the two symbols for User 1 are sent from the two
antennas of the transmitter. User 1 hears a linear combination of
desired symbols, while User 2 hears a linear combination of undesired
(interfering) symbols. In time slot 2, the same action is performed with
the two symbols meant for User 2, so that User 2 hears a linear com-
bination of desired symbols while User 1 hears a linear combination
of undesired symbols. No CSIT is used so far. The crucial interference
alignment step occurs in time slot 3. Now the transmitter has knowl-
edge of all the channel states in the rst two time slots (note that
the transmitter does not know the current channel state). Based on
this channel knowledge the transmitter is able to reconstruct the linear
combinations of undesired symbols seen by each receiver. The transmit-
ter simply adds these linear combinations and sends their superposition
from the same transmit antenna. In the third time slot, each receiver
inverts its channel, so that the channel gain to the transmitting antenna
can be normalized to unity. This gives each receiver a superposition of
the linear combination of interfering symbols that it has already seen,
and a new linear combination of desired symbols that it has not seen
previously. Subtracting the previously seen linear combination of inter-
fering symbols, each receiver has access to two dierent linear combi-
nations of its desired symbols from which it can resolve the two desired
symbols. The scheme is generalized in a nontrivial fashion to the MISO
BC with K transmit antennas and K single antenna receivers where a
total of
K
1+
1
2
+
1
3
++
1
K
DoF are achieved. Moreover if all receivers have
identically distributed channels, then a converse argument based on
an outer bound of [59], along with the result that feedback does not
increase the capacity of a physically degraded BC, is used to show that
this is also the maximum DoF possible with delayed CSIT.
The MISO BC setting of [94] is generalized to the MIMO BC with
arbitrary number of antennas at each node by Vaze and Varanasi in
[150] under the same assumption of delayed CSIT. Vaze and Varanasi
obtain a general outer bound for the K user setting and show that it
is tight for the K = 2 user case, so that for K = 2 the DoF region is
given by the bound
d
1
min(M,N
1
+N
2
)
+
d
2
min(M,N
2
)
1 and its counterpart
obtained by switching indices 1, 2. Here M is the number of antennas
at the base station, and N
k
is the number of antennas at Receiver
k, k 1, 2. To appreciate the role of CSIT in the two user MIMO
BC, suppose, that N
2
N
1
. The DoF region for this setting is found
for perfect CSIT by Weingarten et al. in [160], for no CSIT by Huang
et al. in [59], and for delayed CSIT by Vaze and Varanasi in [150]. When
M N
1
the DoF region is identical with perfect, delayed or no CSIT.
As M increases so that N
1
< M N
2
, the DoF region with perfect
CSIT is bigger than that with no CSIT or delayed CSIT, the last two
being identical. So, there is no advantage of delayed CSIT in terms of
the DoF region, unless M > N
2
, at which point delayed CSIT leads
to a larger DoF region than no CSIT. Lastly, increasing M beyond
N
1
+ N
2
does not further enlarge the DoF region whether the setting
is with perfect, delayed or no CSIT.
While there are some similarities between the blind interference
alignment example of Figure 4.8 and the retrospective interference
alignment example of Figure 4.9, there are also very signicant
fundamental dierences. The blind interference alignment scheme of
Figure 4.8 is equally applicable to the MISO BC and the X channel,
i.e., it pays no DoF penalty for breaking up the two antenna transmitter
into two transmitters with a single antenna each. On the other hand,
the retrospective interference alignment scheme of Figure 4.9 requires
data sharing between the two transmit antennas for the third time slot
transmission. Thus it cannot be applied as such to the X channel. For
the blind interference alignment scheme, one receiver does not need to
know the channel state of the other receiver. However, for retrospec-
tive alignment, each receiver needs to know the channel state of the
other receiver. This is because the linear combination of desired sym-
bols received over the third time slot is formed with the other users
channel coecients.
For the setting with distributed transmitters, especially when an
independent message originates at each transmitter, a distributed ret-
rospective interference alignment scheme is introduced by Maleki et al.
in [95]. The distributed retrospective interference alignment scheme
is capable of achieving 8/7 DoF for the two user X channel, as well
as for two interfering MAC channels with only single-antenna nodes,
each consisting of two users communicating with a receiver. It is not
known, however, if 8/7 DoF is also the best achievable DoF for these
settings with delayed CSIT. Similarly, distributed retrospective inter-
ference alignment is used to achieve 9/8 DoF on the three user inter-
ference channel with single antenna nodes, but it is not known if this
is the maximum value of DoF with delayed CSIT for this channel.
Maleki et al. also provide an example of retrospective interference
alignment for the two-user MIMO interference channel. The setting
(1 2, 1)(3 4, d
2
) was rst highlighted by Huang et al. in [59] where
the question of the largest possible value of d without perfect CSIT
was posed. Huang et al. argued that depending on whether or not
interference alignment is possible, the maximum feasible value of d
2
could be as high as 1.5 or as low as 1. Here feasibility is intended
in the information theoretic sense, and not necessarily restricted to
linear schemes. With no CSIT, if all channels are i.i.d. isotropic, Zhu
and Guo show in [167] that no interference alignment is possible and
the maximum possible value of d
2
is 1. In the absence of CSIT, if
the channels are not isotropic, the largest value of d
2
remains open.
With delayed CSIT, Maleki et al. show in [95] that indeed d
2
= 1.5 is
achievable through retrospective interference alignment.
The complete DoF region of the two user MIMO IC with delayed
CSIT and with arbitrary number of antennas at each node, was
obtained by Vaze and Varanasi in [149]. Interestingly, in some cases
delayed CSIT achieves the same DoF region as when full CSIT is avail-
able, and which is strictly larger than possible with no CSIT (in the
isotropic fading case). For example, the DoF point (1 2, 1)(4 3, 2)
is on the DoF region boundary with perfect CSIT, is also achievable
with delayed CSIT, but cannot be achieved without CSIT under i.i.d.
isotropic fading.
Maleki et al. [95] also consider the possibility of providing delayed
channel output feedback to the transmitters instead of delayed CSIT.
While neither setting is clearly superior to the other, it is shown that
with channel output feedback the X channel can achieve 4/3 DoF (i.e.,
the same as the MISO BC), and the three user interference channel
can achieve 6/5 DoF, respectively. The DoF gains enabled by delayed
channel output feedback are especially remarkable given that with full
instantaneous CSIT, it has been shown by Cadambe and Jafar in [28]
that feedback does not increase the DoF of fully connected X or inter-
ference networks with any number of users.
5
Applications of Interference Alignment
The idea of interference alignment is a common ingredient of many, if
not most, multiuser communication network capacity problems. Given
a communication network, a fundamental challenge is to determine
what form of interference alignment may lead to the most accessible
signal dimensions. While there is no completely systematic or general
approach known so far that is applicable to all settings where interfer-
ence alignment is needed, a focus of this section is to highlight the broad
range of problems where the asymptotic interference alignment scheme
of [CJ08] is applicable. We expect that by the end of this section, the
reader will be able to develop a systematic understanding of the [CJ08]
scheme and to apply it even to networks not considered anywhere pre-
viously. As discussed previously in Section 4.7 the applications of the
[CJ08] scheme can be interpreted either over time-varying/frequency-
selective channels to achieve alignment of signal vector spaces through
linear beamforming, or over constant channel coecients (both real or
complex) to achieve alignment of rational dimensions in the framework
of [93, 99]. As such, we will not distinguish between these settings in the
descriptions below. Finally, we will assume global and perfect channel
knowledge for all examples in this section.
68
5.1 K User Interference Channel 69
5.1 K User Interference Channel
The K user interference channel has K/2 DoF in general. The
achievable scheme is based on the asymptotic alignment scheme of
[CJ08], described previously in Section 4.6, and is illustrated again
in Figure 5.1(a). The columns of V are the signaling dimensions along
which individual streams are sent. These columns are designed accord-
ing to the [CJ08] construction to be (approximately) invariant to linear
transformations T
i
corresponding to the interfering links shown in red
in Figure 5.1(a). All transmitters use the same V. The invariance of V
to the cross-channels forces all the interference at each receiver into the
same signaling dimensions V. The direct channels H
[kk]
act as generic
linear transformations that cause the desired signals H
[kk]
V to have the
minimum overlap possible with the interference space. By choosing the
dimension of the overall space to be big enough to contain both desired
and interfering dimensions, the overlap between desired and interfering
signal dimensions is reduced to zero. Since H
[kk]
are full rank trans-
formations, the number of dimensions of desired signals H
[kk]
V is the
same as the number of dimensions occupied by interference V. Thus, at
each receiver, half the total number of signal dimensions is occupied by
Fig. 5.1 [CJ08] scheme to achieve K/2 DoF on the K user interference channel, without
compound states on the left, and with compound states on the right.
70 Applications of Interference Alignment
interference, and the remaining half is available to the desired signals
free from interference. In other words, everyone gets half the cake.
Going beyond sum-DoF to the entire DoF region, a simple time-
sharing argument shows that the DoF region of the K user interfer-
ence channel consists of DoF tuples (d
1
, . . . , d
K
) that satisfy all the
inequalities d
i
+ d
j
1, i, j 1, 2, . . . , K, i ,= j. Moreover, if every
node is equipped with M antennas, the DoF region is simply enlarged
by a factor M. This is shown for K = 3 in [22] and for general K
in [163]. Further generalizations of the K user interference channel
include the setting with general message sets considered in [78] where
the [CJ08] scheme is used to nd the DoF region for the case where
we have K transmitters, each with an independent message, and J
receivers, each of whom may be interested in arbitrary subsets of the
K messages.
Another illustrative example is the nite state compound setting
for the K user interference channel, as shown in Figure 5.1(b). The
compound setting may be used to model channel uncertainty, or be
interpreted as multiple multicasts. In a S state compound channel,
each receiver can be in one of S distinct states, or equivalently, there
is a group of S receivers that are all interested in the same message.
Thus, instead of K receivers, each interested in one message, we now
have K groups of receivers, with each group interested in one mes-
sage, such that all receivers in that group must decode the desired
message. Clearly the compound setting makes the interference align-
ment task more challenging because of the increase in the number of
alignment constraints. The conventional wisdom for compound chan-
nels was that as the number of states increases, the increasing number
of signal zero-forcing and alignment constraints, will lead to a collapse
of the DoF. However, as shown in Figure 5.1(b) the [CJ08] construction
applies directly to the compound channel setting as well with no loss
of DoF, i.e., regardless of the number of states (assumed nite), each
user achieves half the cake.
Open Problem: While the DoF of the K user interference channel are
robust to the nite state compound setting, a challenging open problem
is to determine the DoF when the number of states is countably innite,
or worse, uncountable.
5.2 K User M N MIMO Interference Channels
A K User M N MIMO interference channel refers to the K user
interference channel where every transmitter has N antennas and every
receiver has M antennas. Going from the DoF characterization of the
SISO (M = N = 1) K user interference channel to the MIMO K user
interference channel is straightforward when all nodes have the same
number of antennas, M = N. In that case, simply by splitting each
node into M separate nodes, we transform the K user M M MIMO
interference channel into the KM user 1 1 interference channel, for
which we already know that MK/2 DoF are achievable. Since this
is also the outer bound for the K user M M MIMO interference
channel, the DoF characterization is complete.
The characterization of the DoF of MIMO interference channels is
more challenging when all the nodes do not have the same number of
antennas. For example, consider the K user M 1 SIMO interference
channel where each receiver has M antennas while each transmitter has
only one antenna. Gou and Jafar have shown in [50] that this channel
has
MK
M+1
DoF in total, i.e.,
M
M+1
DoF per user, when K > M. Since in
the absence of interference each user can achieve only 1 DoF, each user
achieves
M
M+1
fraction of the cake. As a sanity check note that in the
SISO setting (M = 1), this fraction reduces to 1/2, as expected.
To see how this is done, consider the M = 2 case, as shown in
Figure 5.2. Let us rst consider the interference seen by any receiver,
say Receiver 1. As before, all transmitters use the same signal space V.
Note that because the receiver has twice as many antennas as the trans-
mitter, the size of the signal space seen by Receiver 1 is twice as big
as the transmit space accessible to any transmitter individually. As we
know from the property of generic subspaces, they do not overlap if
they do not have to, i.e., if the overall space is big enough to accom-
modate both of them. Therefore, under generic channel conditions the
transmit spaces from any two transmitters will not overlap. In other
words, interference from any two transmitters cannot be aligned with
each other as seen from Receiver 1. This may seem at rst a challenging
problem, because so far all the interference alignment schemes discussed
in Section 4 have relied on one-to-one interference alignment, i.e., an
Fig. 5.2 [CJ08] scheme used to achieve the DoF of the K user SIMO interference channel.
interference carrying signal vector from one transmitter is aligned with
an interference carrying signal vector from another transmitter. In the
SIMO interference channel, on the other hand, we see that the inter-
ference from no two transmitters can align with each other.
The key to this puzzle is the idea of many-to-many alignment, or
the alignment of subspaces instead of alignment of vectors themselves.
For instance, in the introductory example (2.4)(2.6) the interfering
vectors H
2
, H
3
, H
4
, H
5
do not possess any one-to-one alignment.
The vectors are pairwise linearly independent. However, the subspace
spanned by vectors H
4
, H
5
aligns perfectly with the subspace spanned
by vectors H
2
, H
3
. Applied to the SIMO interference channel setting
of Figure 5.2, what this means is that while the interference signals
from any two transmitters cannot be aligned among themselves, the
interference from any three transmitters can be aligned within the space
spanned by the interference from any two of them. In general, i.e., in
the K user M 1 SIMO interference channel, the interference signals
from any M transmitters cannot be aligned among themselves, but the
interference from any M + 1 transmitters can be aligned within the
space spanned by the interference from any M of them.
Returning to the SIMO interference channel of Figure 5.2, since
all transmitters use the signal space V and the signals from any two
transmitters cannot overlap, the interference space from transmitters 2
and 3 must already occupy 2[V[ dimensions at Receiver 1. Now the key
is to align the interference from all the remaining undesired transmitters
into the 2[V[ dimensional interference space occupied by the signals
from transmitters 2 and 3. We proceed as follows.
The interference space needs to be twice as large as the transmit sig-
nal space. We will set the interference space at each receiver to V V,
i.e., the column span of the matrix
_
V 0
0 V
_
.
Indeed within this interference space, all interference can be aligned.
For example, consider a transmitter with interference-carrying matrices
T
i,a
, T
i,b
to the two antennas of Receiver 1. The alignment we seek
is between the actual interference space, i.e., the column-span of the
matrix of received interference vectors and the designated interference
space, i.e., V V:
span
_
T
i,a
V
T
i,b
V
_

span
_
V 0
0 V
_
,
V T
i,a
V T
i,b
V
where the symbols

, are meant to highlight that the inclusion and
equivalence will only be achieved in the approximate and asymptotic
sense of the [CJ08] scheme.
This is quite remarkable we have reduced a many-to-many align-
ment problem, i.e., a subspace alignment problem, into a one-to-one
alignment problem that we know how to solve (in an asymptotic sense).
Collecting similar alignment conditions from all transmitters to all
receivers, once again we nd exactly the same alignment problem that
the [CJ08] scheme is designed to solve. Thus, the problem is solved by
constructing V such that
V T
1,a
V T
1,b
V T
N,a
V T
N,b
V.
With this scheme 2[V[ dimensions are occupied by the interference at
each receiver. The desired signal occupies [V[ dimensions. The overall
signal space at the receiver needs to be 3[V[ dimensions to keep desired
signal separate frominterference. Thus, the desiredsignal at eachreceiver
occupies 1/3 of the total dimensions available to the receiver. Since each
receiver has twoantennas, i.e., twospatial dimensions per channel use, the
accessible DoF per user is 2/3 per channel use.
The [CJ08] scheme applied to the SIMO interference channel as
summarized above, can also be directly translated to the reciprocal
setting the MISO interference channel by the duality property
established in [23, 48]. DoF for the K user interference channel with
M antennas at each transmitter and N antennas at each receiver are
found in [50] when the ratio R = max(M, N)/min(M, N) is an inte-
ger, and the result is shown in Figure 5.3. Interestingly, there is no
DoF penalty from interference while the number of users K R, i.e.,
zero forcing suces and everyone gets min(M, N) DoF, i.e., everyone
gets all the cake. On the other hand, when K R + 1, the DoF per
user are again not limited by the number of users, and everyone gets
min(M, N)
R
R+1
DoF because of interference alignment. However, there
is a clear transition from the zero-forcing regime to the interference
alignment regime as we go from K = R to K = R + 1. Here the total
DoF does not increase even though one user is added. For instance, the
Fig. 5.3 DoF of the K user M N MIMO Interference Channel when R =
max(M,N)
min(M,N)
is an
integer [50].
two user interference channel has 1 DoF, as does the one user interfer-
ence channel (i.e., just the point to point channel with no interferer).
The K = R + 1 setting is indeed special as it is the highest number
of users for which capacity characterizations within an SNR indepen-
dent bounded gap (i.e., capacity within O(1)) are available for a given
integer R value [53] for almost all channel realizations.
Finally, Ghasemi et al. have shown in [44] that the DoF of the K
user M N interference channel equal
R
R+1
per user even when R is not
an integer, provided that the number of users K >
M+N
gcd(M,N)
, where gcd
refers to the greatest common divisor function. The [CJ08] alignment
scheme applied within the rational dimensions framework for constant
channels, also achievable equivalently through linear beamforming over
time-varying channels, is the key to this result as well.
Open Problem: It is evident that multiple antennas create additional
signal dimensions, as does the scaling of power. For instance increas-
ing power from P to P
2
doubles the signal level dimension, while dou-
bling the number of antennas doubles the number of spatial dimensions.
To what extent can one dimension be traded o against another, is an
interesting open problem of fundamental interest. Another fundamental
problem is the issue of scaling of DoF with the spatial dimension. With
full CSI and generic channels, is it true (for every network topology)
that scaling the number of antennas at each node by will increase
the total DoF of the network by the same factor? While this is the
case for all DoF results found so far, establishing this property in gen-
eral would be a useful step in understanding the similarity/dierence
between time/frequency and space dimensions.
5.3 Cellular Networks
The DoF of cellular networks are characterized by Suh and Tse in [139].
In this setting we have K cells, each containing a base station and M
users that are served by that base station. All nodes are equipped with
a single antenna. The DoF result for this setting is that each cell is
able to access a fraction
M
M+1
of the cake. Thus, for large number of
users, the DoF per cell approach the interference-free setting. While
Suh and Tse propose an interference alignment scheme that they call
Fig. 5.4 [CJ08] scheme applied to a cellular uplink network with three cells and three user
in each cell to achieve 3/4 DoF per cell.
subspace alignment in [139], we will continue the theme of this section
by presenting a solution based on the [CJ08] scheme.
As an example, consider uplink communication in a network of three
cells, with three users in each cell, illustrated in Figure 5.4. As usual,
each transmitter uses the same signal space V. The interference expe-
rienced by a base station, e.g., Base Station 1, consists of terms like
T
i
V. Collecting all the interference terms together, the [CJ08] scheme
ensures
V T
1
V T
N
V.
With this alignment, the interference occupies [V[ dimensions at each
base station. The M desired signals from desired users must be mutu-
ally separable and therefore need to occupy M[V[ dimensions at their
desired base station. The desired and interfering signals do not over-
lap at the base station receiver when the overall signal space is large
enough to accommodate them, i.e., it spans (M + 1)[V[ dimensions
and all the direct channels (shown in blue in Figure 5.4) are generic.
Thus, each user achieves a total of
|V|
(M+1)|V|
=
1
M+1
DoF and each cell
achieves a total of
M
M+1
DoF.
The MISO downlink cellular setting where base stations equipped
with M antennas transmit to N single-antenna users in each cell is
explored in [44] and it is shown that
MN
M+N
DoF are achievable. Interest-
ingly, here also the DoF per cell approach the interference-free setting,
i.e., each cell achieves close to M DoF as the number of users per cell
becomes large. The MIMO cellular downlink setting with two cells, each
cell having K users with K antennas at each user and each cell hav-
ing a base station equipped with K + 1 antennas is shown to achieve
2K DoF in [133]. At this point we take a brief detour to highlight an
interesting observation from the last two sections.
Observation: DoF benets of collocated antennas disappear with
increasing number of alignment constraints
Figure 5.5 shows four dierent networks that each have the same
DoF. First, Figure 5.5(a) is the K user SIMO interference channel
where each receiver has M antennas. This setting is reviewed in Sec-
tion 5.2 and the [CJ08] solution is illustrated in Figure 5.2. If K > M,
then as illustrated in Figure 5.3 this network has a total of
MK
M+1
DoF.
The reciprocal network is the K user MISO interference channel shown
in Figure 5.5(b) where each transmitter has K antennas, and it also
has the same DoF. Now, consider the interfering MAC channel setting
shown in Figure 5.5 where K cellular uplinks interfere with each other
and each cell has M users. This setting is considered in Section 5.3 and
a solution based on the [CJ08] scheme is also illustrated in Figure 5.4.
Here also the total DoF=
MK
M+1
. The last setting shown in Figure 5.5(d)
consists of K interfering downlinks with M users in each cell. Since this
is the reciprocal network of the interfering uplinks network shown in
Figure 5.5(c) it is not surprising that this network also has
MK
M+1
DoF.
Now, let us compare the networks of Figures 5.5(a) and 5.5(d), i.e.,
the SIMO interference channel and the interfering downlink channels.
Clearly, the interfering downlink channels represent a more restricted
network setting than the SIMO interference channel. In particular, the
SIMO interference channel becomes the interfering downlinks channel
if no cooperation is allowed between the M receive antennas of each
Fig. 5.5 Networks that have the same DoF =
M
M+1
K when K > M, i.e., when the number
of alignment constraints exceeds a threshold (a) The K user SIMO Interference Channel
with M antennas at each receiver, (b) The K user MISO Interference Channel with M
antennas at each transmitter (c) Interfering MAC Channels from K cellular uplinks with
M users in each cell, (d) Interfering BC Channels from K cellular downlinks with M users
in each cell.
receiver. In general, disallowing cooperation between receive antennas
would lead to a loss of DoF. However, as we know these two net-
works have the same DoF when the condition K > M is satised.
1
Similarly, the network of Figure 5.5(c) is obtained from the network
of Figure 5.5(b) by disallowing cooperation among transmit antennas,
which also does not lead to a loss of DoF when K > M. This is a com-
mon theme that will reappear in Section 5.5, especially highlighted in
Figure 5.7 where again, the price paid for too many alignment con-
straints will be the loss of the DoF benets of multiple antennas.
Lastly we point out that the [CJ08] scheme illustrated as a solu-
tion to the K user SIMO interference channel problem in Figure 5.2
1
For K M indeed the SIMO channel benets from joint processing among the M receive
antennas as it allows zero forcing at receivers and therefore achieves higher DoF than
possible in the interfering downlinks setting.
5.4 X Networks 79
does exploit the joint processing among the M receive antennas. An
alternate scheme that does not require this joint processing can be
constructed from the reciprocal version of the [CJ08] solution for the
interfering uplinks problem illustrated in Figure 5.4. Thus, there are
two distinct solutions possible for the same problem, that are equivalent
in DoF, but upon closer inspection will show that much larger symbol
extensions are needed in the case without joint processing among the
M receive antennas. In fact the size of symbol extensions is larger by
a factor of about M for the case with separate receive antennas rela-
tive to the case where the M receive antennas can process their signals
jointly, i.e., Figure 5.5(a) versus Figure 5.5(c). The distributed solution,
i.e., requiring no cooperation among antennas is presented explicitly by
Ghasemi et al. for the constant channels setting, i.e., using the rational
dimensions framework, in [44].
Open Problem: While the K user SIMO interference channel is
equivalent to the interfering BC channels setting in DoF, the two may
behave distinctly in GDoF. Interestingly, the GDoF characterization of
the N + 1 user, 1 N SIMO interference channel is known from the
work of Gou and Jafar in [53]. Thus, nding the GDoF of, e.g., the three
interfering SISO downlinks problem with 2 users in each cell, will allow
direct comparisons against the GDoF of the three user 1 2 SIMO
interference channel and shed light on the benets of joint processing
of signals at the receivers.
5.4 X Networks
Cadambe and Jafar determine the DoF of M N X networks in [23].
An M N X network consists of M single antenna transmitters, N sin-
gle antenna receivers and M N independent messages, one from each
transmitter to each receiver. Cadambe and Jafar show that a total of
MN
M+N1
DoF are achieved in this setting with time-varying channels.
The result is based on the [CJ08] IA scheme and is translated into the
rational dimensions framework to achieve the same DoF with constant
channels by Motahari et al. in [99]. The application of the [CJ08] IA
scheme in this setting is described below on the 3 3 X network shown
in Figure 5.6.
Fig. 5.6 Interference alignment on the 3 3 X channel.
Consider the three independent messages intended for Receiver 1,
one from each transmitter. In order to send these messages, each
transmitter selects the same signal space V
1
. The [CJ08] IA scheme
ensures that these signals align into the same interference space V
1
at
Receivers 2, 3 where they constitute interference. The subspace con-
straints for this alignment involve only the channels to Receivers 2, 3,
i.e., the channels to Receiver 1 are not involved. This independence
of the desired channels, their generic nature, and the choice of over-
all signal space big enough to accommodate generic subspaces without
forcing overlaps between them, is sucient to ensure that the desired
signal spaces at Receiver 1 do not overlap. Similarly, the three messages
for Receiver 2, one from each transmitter, are sent along the same sig-
nal space V
2
and align into that same space at Receivers 1, 3 where
they constitute interference, while remaining distinct at Receiver 2,
where they are desired. And nally, the three messages for Receiver 3
are sent along V
3
, align along V
3
at Receivers 1, 2 and are separable
at Receiver 3. The size of the signal spaces are chosen to be equal, i.e.,
[V
1
[ = [V
2
[ = [V
3
[ = . The size of the total signal space (the number
of time/frequency slots) is chosen to be 5 to accommodate all the
signals in general position without any unnecessary overlaps beyond
those forced by the [CJ08] IA scheme. The scheme applies similarly to
X networks with arbitrary number of source and destination nodes.
Open Problem: The DoF characterization of a MIMO S D
X network, when both S and D are large (at least greater than 2), and
all nodes are equipped with M > 1 antennas, and channel conditions
5.5 Compound MISO BC Channel 81
are generic, is an interesting open problem. This is because for large
X networks the multiplicity of alignment constraints evidently requires
the use of the [CJ08] scheme, which does not fully exploit joint process-
ing power of multiple antennas, except by breaking them into separate
nodes. Surprisingly, in all settings where the DoF are known so far, the
MIMO case with large number of alignment constraints lose all DoF
benets of joint processing at the antennas.
5.5 Compound MISO BC Channel
The study of the DoF of the compound MISO BC was initiated by
Weingarten et al. in [159], who found the DoF outer bounds as well as
nontrivial achievable results based on interference alignment. An exam-
ple of a compound MISO BC is shown on the left side of Figure 5.7,
where a two-antenna transmitter wishes to send three independent mes-
sages to three separate groups of users. Each group consists of two users
who want the same message. The users within a group may also be seen
as dierent possible states of the same user, to model channel uncer-
tainty at the transmitter. Clearly the presence of multiple users within
each group, or multiple potential states for each user, places greater
demands on the decodability of the message, as each user within a
group is now required to be able to decode the message. It was orig-
inally thought that as the number of users within each group (or the
Fig. 5.7 On the left, three user 2 1 compound MISO BC with two states for each receiver.
On the right, 2 3 compound X channel with two states for each receiver.
number of states) increases, the multiplexing gains will be lost and DoF
will collapse to 1. However, it was shown by Gou et al. [52] using the
[CJ08] scheme that the DoF do not collapse regardless of the number
of states for each user. Gou et al. applied the [CJ08] scheme for the
time-varying (real or complex) setting and showed how to translate it
into the constant (real) channels setting using the rational dimensions
framework [99]. The result was extended to complex constant channels
by Maddah-Ali in [93] based on a fundamental extension of the rational
dimensions framework itself to include complex channels.
The key to the DoF of the compound MISO BC when each users
channel can be in one of a large number of states is the underlying
X channel obtained by separating the transmit antennas into dierent
transmitters. As shown on the right side of Figure 5.7, the compound
BC with no cooperation among transmit antennas, becomes equivalent
to a compound X channel. Given this observation, and the ability of
the [CJ08] scheme to asymptotically satisfy an arbitrarily large num-
ber of alignment constraints with no DoF penalty, it is evident that
the compound X channel has the same DoF regardless of the num-
ber of states. Thus, a compound X channel with two transmitters and
three receivers has
23
2+31
= 1.5 DoF regardless of the number of states
of each user, provided the states are generic and the number of states
is nite. Combined with the outer bounding techniques of Weingarten
et al. [159], this proved that the DoF of the compound MISO BC do
not collapse to unity, but they do collapse to the DoF of the under-
lying X channel obtained by separating the transmit antennas. Thus,
in general, a compound MISO BC with M transmit antennas and K
single-antenna users, each of which can be in J dierent states, has
exactly
MK
M+K1
DoF regardless of J, if J is large enough specically,
if J M.
Open Problem: An interesting open problem here is to determine if
the DoF equivalence between the compound MISO BC and the com-
pound X channel extends to the GDoF setting. We expect that the
benets of joint processing among antennas will be visible in the GDoF
setting and the nature of loss due to distributed processing could pro-
vide interesting new insights.
5.6 Network Coding Multiple Unicasts
Along with the recent progress on wireless interference networks, a
related success story has been the idea of network coding for commu-
nication over wired networks. In spite of the vast dierences in the
communication problem formulations in the wired and wireless set-
tings, it is interesting to note that these two threads are increasingly
converging around the same set of basic principles. For instance, just as
recent developments in wireless networks argue against orthogonaliza-
tion of medium access, the idea of network coding advocates the mixing
of packets instead of traditional routing approaches that may be seen
as orthogonalizing the ows in a network. While much of the initial
success in network coding has been in the context of multicast net-
works (where all information is desired at all receivers, i.e., there is no
undesired signal/interference) it is also becoming clear that some of the
most important open problems in network coding, such as the multiple
unicast problem, could signicantly benet from the tools developed
for wireless interference networks in particular, from the idea of
interference alignment. Once the ows are mixed the network coding
problem starts bearing resemblance to the wireless interference chan-
nel, as each destination must separate the desired symbols from the
undesired symbols based on a set of received linear equations. With
linear network coding the end-to-end network allows a channel matrix
representation, much like the wireless interference channel and many
of the insights from interference alignment schemes may be expected
to carry over.
Let us consider the graph shown in Figure 5.8 and three unicast
sessions: sources 1, 2, 3 send one symbol, x, y, z respectively, to their
respective destinations. First, we note that the min-cut between any
corresponding sourcedestination pair is 2, and thus, each session could
send at rate equal to two symbols per channel-use, if it were the only
one routed over this network. However, since all desired ows must
pass through only two edges (the ones at the top and the bottom
of the gure), routing cannot achieve a sum-rate of more than two
symbols per channel-use. On the other hand, when interference align-
Fig. 5.8 Interference alignment for three Unicast Sessions [120]. Each link has the same
capacity, which is equal to the information carried by each of the symbols x, y, z.
ment is used in conjunction with network coding at intermediate nodes,
each session can simultaneously achieve half its interference-free rate.
Figure 5.8 shows one way to achieve that goal. Each destination receives
two equations in the three variables x, y, z. Even though there are more
variables than equations, alignment allows these two equations to be
solved to recover the desired variable. For example, destination 1, sub-
tracts 2x + 3y + 4z from 4x + 3y + 4z to simultaneously eliminate all
interference and recover the value of x. Furthermore, the sum rate of
three symbols per channel-use, achieved by interference alignment and
network coding can be shown to be capacity optimal for this example.
As explained earlier, routing by itself can only achieve a maximum sum-
rate of two symbols per channel-use. Random linear network coding
(by itself, without alignment) fails because the number of equations is
smaller than the number of variables. A careful inspection shows that
breaking down the network into buttery structures does not suce
either. In fact, alignment is necessary to achieve the optimal data rates
for this network.
Recent work by Das et al. in [36, 120] explores the use of the [CJ08]
alignment scheme to nd systematic interference alignment solutions to
arbitrary multiple unicast problems. Applications of the [CJ08] scheme
to three-source three-destination unicast networks with delays are stud-
ied by Bavirisetti et al. in [9], where a transform approach is used to
convert the network with delays into parallel instantaneous networks.
The approach taken in these works is to identify conditions when half
the min-cut is achievable for each ow, based on the alignment guaran-
tees provided by the [CJ08] IA scheme. The principal challenge is the
existence of spatial dependencies among channels as multiple ows pass
through the same set of intermediate nodes. The spatial dependencies
aect the assumption of generic direct channels, needed in the [CJ08]
scheme for desired signals to remain distinguishable from interference.
This work is still in its early stages and the understanding of these spa-
tial dependencies is so far limited to the three unicast setting, where
analogies are drawn to the three user interference channel.
Another issue that comes up in translating interference alignment
schemes from wireless networks to network coding applications is that
the former setting operates over continuous signals whereas the latter is
invariably dened over nite elds. In particular the notion of generic
channels is often invoked in the wireless setting, to mean that since
the channels are drawn from continuous distributions, they will not
satisfy any more linear relationships than they must. The correspond-
ing statement over nite elds comes from the Schwartz-Zippel lemma,
which implies that the probability that a nonzero polynomial will have
roots at randomly selected test points can be made arbitrarily small
by operating over a suciently large eld size. Since linear indepen-
dence relationships can be formulated equivalently as the nonvanishing
property of determinant polynomials, the generic properties of random
variables drawn from continuous distributions translate to the random
variables drawn from suciently large nite elds.
While there exist examples [120] where the interference alignment
benets from wireless networks can be directly adapted into the corre-
sponding wired network setting, such a translation cannot be taken for
granted in general due to several very fundamental dierences in the
nature of wired and wireless networks. For instance, consider a wireless
X network where S sources wish to communicate with D destinations
over wireless channels, and each source has an independent message for
each destination for a total of S D messages. This setting provides the
maximum DoF that can be obtained between S sources and D destina-
tion nodes (among all possible choices of message sets) without genie-
aideddata sharing among the nodes. Assuming generic channels, the DoF
for this setting are shown to be equal to
SD
S+D1
by Cadambe and Jafar
in [23], which can only be obtained through interference alignment and
is signicantly smaller than the network min-cut min(S, D). On the other
hand, consider the correspondingnetworkcodingproblemwithS sources,
D destinations, and S D independent messages, one from each source
to each destination. Surprisingly, regardless of the network topology, the
sum-capacity of this network is equal to the network min-cut anddoes not
require any interference alignment. In fact, it does not require any net-
workcodingeither, as simple routingsuces toachieve the min-cut inthis
setting. To see this, suppose we allow all S sources to cooperate, and all
Ddestinations to cooperate, by collectively processing their signals. This
creates a single ow problem for which capacity is known to be the min-
cut rate, and is achieved with routing with assignment of ows accord-
ing to the FordFulkerson algorithm. Since routing does not require any
mixing of packets, the routing solution does not require any cooperation
across source or destination nodes. Therefore, the same min-cut sum-rate
is achievable in the original network without cooperation among nodes as
well. Thus, the X network setting, one of the most important settings to
highlight the benets of interference alignment, is trivial in the network-
coding context.
Open Problem: The general question of using interference alignment
techniques and emerging insights from the study of wireless networks to
provide systematic guarantees on achievable rates of multiple unicast
network coding problems remains a very interesting and open research
avenue.
There is a class of network coding problems where interference align-
ment has been shown to be essential, and the [CJ08] scheme has been
applied most successfully to nd the optimal network coding solution.
This is the so-called distributed storage exact repair problem. Next,
we summarize the distributed storage repair problem and the solution
based on the [CJ08] scheme.
5.7 Distributed Storage Exact Repair Problem
A detailed description of the distributed storage problem is beyond the
scope of this monograph. We refer the reader to an excellent survey by
Fig. 5.9 Distributed Storage Exact Repair Problem for a (2,4) MDS code.
Dimakis et al. [37]. For our purpose, we introduce the distributed stor-
age exact repair problem through the example illustrated in Figure 5.9.
Consider a le, conceptually comprised of four data symbols
(a
1
, a
2
, b
1
, b
2
) that is to be stored in four distributed storage nodes, each
capable of storing two symbols. Nodes 1 and 2 are systematic nodes
and store data symbols uncoded, while Nodes 3 and 4 may be regarded
as parity nodes and store linear combinations of the symbols. The code
is a (2,4) MDS code, i.e., all the information can be recovered from any
two storage nodes (so that failure of any two nodes does not result in
irreparable information loss), and also the total storage capacity of the
nodes that need to survive is equal to the actual data. The latter is also
referred to as the minimum storage property. The exact repair problem
is concerned with the scenario where one of the storage nodes, e.g.,
node 1 fails. A new node the repair node is required to repair the
network by replacing the node with its exact replica. The repair node is
capable of contacting some of the surviving storage nodes. However, it
must do so while downloading only the minimum information possible
from the nodes that it is able to contact. For this example, the repair
node is able to contact all surviving nodes, i.e., nodes 2, 3, 4. The min-
imum information to be downloaded by the repair node, also known
as the minimum repair bandwidth, is found from an information theo-
retic min-cut argument to be equal to one symbol from each surviving
storage node, for a total of three symbols. Now we note that there are
a total of four unknown symbols a
1
, a
2
, b
1
, b
2
. The repair node can only
download three symbols, which provide it with three equations. With
generic equations, as mentioned earlier, it is not possible to recover the
two desired symbols because the number of equations is less than the
number of variables. However, with interference alignment, these equa-
tions can be cleverly crafted so that the two undesired variables align
into a one-dimensional space, i.e., they can be collectively treated as
one variable. As shown in Figure 5.9, with the two interfering vari-
ables b
1
, b
2
aligned into one variable b
1
+ b
2
it is possible to solve the
three equations for the three eective variables and thereby recover the
desired variables a
1
, a
2
.
The exact repair problem was solved through elegant and explicit
alignment solutions for all (k, n) MDS codes such that n 2k in
[130, 137]. It was also shown in [130] that in general scalar linear codes
do not meet the min-cut bound for the exact repair problem. The exact
repair solution for (k, n) MDS codes in the low redundancy setting
(k/n > 1/2) was open, until recent work by Cadambe et al. in [29] and
Suh and Ramchandran in [138] where the [CJ08] scheme was applied
to obtain a complete solution. The general solution is summarized next
with the help of Figure 5.10.
As shown in Figure 5.10 a le of size k symbols is to be stored in
n distributed data storage nodes, each capable of storing symbols,
such that the failure of any n k nodes will not lead to permanent
loss of information. Since only (any) k nodes need to survive, the total
amount of data that must survive is no more than the size of the orig-
inal le. We need the minimum storage property, i.e., we need MDS
codes. The specic code constructed in Figure 5.10 consists of, rst, k
systematic nodes that simply store the k independent pieces of the le
of size each without any coding, and then n k parity nodes that
Fig. 5.10 [CJ08] scheme as used in [29] for the exact repair problem for an (k, n) MDS code
when r = 2 storage nodes fail and d of the remaining nodes are contacted by the repair
agent.
store linear combinations. In particular, if we consider the le fragments
X
1
, X
2
, . . . , X
k
as k vectors each 1, i.e., each containing symbols,
then each parity node contains a linear combination of all the fragments
X
k
each scaled by a generic diagonal matrix T
i
. The MDS property of
this code construction is established in [29]. The coding matrices T
i
are analogous to the channel matrices in the wireless setting, and their
diagonal nature is crucial for the application of the [CJ08] scheme.
Now suppose that r of the systematic nodes, e.g., nodes 1, 2, . . . , r
fail, where r k, and a repair agent, capable of contacting d of the
surviving n r nodes, wishes to replicate the failed nodes. Note that
we must have d k to have any guarantee that the lost data can be
recovered. Then what is the minimum number of linear equations that
this repair agent must download from each of the d surviving nodes
that it is able to contact, in order to replicate all the failed nodes?
In particular, each node contains linear combinations of the les
data symbols, and the repair agent wishes to download linear combi-
nations, which may themselves be constructed as linear combinations
of the stored data available at the node being contacted. Thus, the
repair agent needs to nd the matrix representing the projec-
tion of the dimensional object into dimensions that it needs to
download. This is the matrix V
T
and the setting is complete for [CJ08]
scheme to be applied. Consistent with the [CJ08] scheme, the repair
agent demands the same projection V of the data stored in each of the
d nodes that it is able to contact. Without loss of generality, we will
assume that the d nodes contacted include among them the surviving
k r systematic nodes this assumption can be justied by a simple
change of basis operation.
To clarify the notation with an example, let us identify the corre-
sponding terms in the simple example of Figure 5.9. For that example,
k = 2, n = 4, = 2, X
1
= (a
1
, a
2
), X
2
= (b
1
, b
2
) is the data stored in sys-
tematic nodes. X
3
= (a
1
+ b
1
, 2a
2
+ b
2
) and X
4
= (2a
1
+ b
1
, a
2
+ b
2
)
can also be seen as
X
3
=
_
1 0
0 2
_
X
1
+
_
1 0
0 1
_
X
2
(5.1)
X
4
=
_
1 0
0 1
_
X
1
+
_
1 0
0 2
_
X
2
, (5.2)
which highlights the diagonal nature of the combining matrices T
i
used
for the parity nodes. In this example, r = 1 as node 1 fails, d = 3 as
nodes 2, 3, 4 are contacted. The matrix V
T
= [1 1], so that = 1. The
equation downloaded from the systematic node (Node 2) is simply
V
T
X
2
and the equations downloaded from the parity nodes (Nodes
3 and 4) are V
T
X
3
, V
T
X
4
respectively. The repair node only wants
X
1
, which means the information contained in X
2
, i.e., symbols b
1
, b
2
only serves as interference. Finally, note that the equation downloaded
from Node 2 serves as the perfect antidote for the interference terms
(b
1
, b
2
) contained in the equations downloaded from the parity nodes
because of interference alignment, i.e., b
1
, b
2
always appear in the same
linear combination b
1
+ b
2
.
Now let us return to the general setting of Figure 5.10. The original
le data consists of k independent data vectors, each of size 1.
Since the repair agent is only interested in r of these that were lost due
to the failed systematic nodes, the remaining k r systematic vectors
constitute undesired information for the repair agent, i.e., any pro-
jection of the information from these vectors constitutes interference.
The desired information can then only come from the d k + r parity
nodes that are also contacted. These parity nodes contain linear com-
binations of all data vectors, including the interference vectors. Since
the amount of data to be repaired is r , and this information comes
only from the d k + r parity nodes that are contacted, the number
of equations to be downloaded from each parity node must be at least
r
dk+r
. Suppose we download only this many equations, i.e., V has
=
r
dk+r
columns representing the projections to be downloaded
from each contacted node. Note that in addition to the desired infor-
mation we also download the interference that is mixed with it, and
has the formV
T
k
i=r+1
T
X
i
. Since only its diagonal form is important
and we wish to minimize notational clutter, we do not identify the spe-
cic subscript for the T matrices. In order to remove this interference
we need antidotes from the k r systematic nodes. The antidotes
themselves take the form V
T
X
i
for i = r + 1, . . . , k.
In order for the antidotes to be eective, we need them to match
the interference. This leads to the requirement that:
V
T
V
T
T
1
V
T
T
2
V
T
T
N
. (5.3)
This is the familiar problem that the [CJ08] scheme is designed to
solve. Thus, for large enough, the [CJ08] scheme is able to align
the antidotes almost perfectly with the interference so that all interfer-
ence can be cancelled and the desired information recovered. The total
data downloaded is d and the data to be repaired is r. Thus,
the normalized repair bandwidth with the scheme described above is
computed as
Data downloaded
Data repaired
=
d
r
(5.4)
=
d
d k + r
, (5.5)
where we made the substitution =
r
dk+r
. It turns out that this
normalized repair bandwidth coincides with the information theoretic
min-cut bound, thus establishing the optimality of the [CJ08] scheme
as an asymptotic vector coding solution to the exact repair problem.
A few ner details are worth mentioning about the solution
presented above. First, we chose the coding matrices T
i
as generic
matrices. Since we are dealing with nite elds, this is meant only
to indicate a random choice of coding matrices over the nite eld
of interest. Further, the random choice of coding matrices is akin
to Shannons random coding argument, ultimately intended not as a
randomized construction with some probability of error, but as an argu-
ment leading to the proof of existence of good channel matrices over suf-
ciently large nite elds via the SchwartzZippel Lemma. Second, the
arguments relying on eld sizes being large enough carry the caveat that
the required eld size may be larger than the minimum requirement for
MDS property. There is much room for improvement over the [CJ08]
scheme in terms of eld size requirements as well as nonasymptotic solu-
tions, as explored most recently in [21, 113, 140]. Lastly, with regard
to (5.3), note that the [CJ08] scheme only establishes an approximate
equivalence between the antidotes and the actual interference. There-
fore, some additional equations need to be downloaded as antidotes.
However, this additional repair bandwidth expansion is a negligible
fraction of the overall data downloaded, and is therefore inconsequen-
tial in the limit of interest (large le sizes).
Open Problem: Open problems in distributed storage that are
related to interference alignment include nding practical codes to
achieve the theoretical bounds achieved by the asymptotic [CJ08]
scheme, nding optimal interference alignment solutions that trade-o
storage capacity of the nodes (i.e., relaxing the minimum-storage con-
straint) against the repair bandwidth, and using interference alignment
to eciently detect and isolate corrupted storage nodes.
5.8 Multihop Interference Networks
Following the review of network coding applications, we return to
wireless networks specically to multihop multiow wireless net-
works. The reader may have noticed that all applications of interference
alignment in wireless networks have focused on single hop networks.
Indeed, applications of interference alignment to multihop interference
networks are not well understood and may be one of the exciting fron-
tiers of research on interference alignment in the near future.
It is shown in [28] that relays do not increase the DoF of inter-
ference networks when the network is fully connected, i.e., all channel
coecients are nonzero and global channel knowledge is available, for
almost all channel coecient values. However, the use of relay nodes
is known to simplify the achievable scheme, e.g., by enabling linear
alignment schemes when lattice alignments would otherwise be needed
and by requiring smaller symbol extensions when asymptotic schemes
would otherwise be necessary [33, 48, 107, 110, 111].
Since relays are often used in settings where the direct signal is not
strong enough, there is interest inlayeredmultihopinterference networks,
especially layered two hop networks, where the sources can be heard by
the relays and the relays are heard by the destinations but the sources
cannot be heard directly by the destination nodes. The discussion in this
section is primarily restricted to layered interference networks.
DoF of two hop layered interference networks are known when there
is a relay that is equipped with suciently many antennas [16, 141] or
when there is a large number (in many cases, approaching innity)
of distributed relays [11, 15, 38, 98, 122]. In all cases the goal is to
completely eliminate interference between communicating transmitter
receiver pairs. With a MIMO relay this can be accomplished by viewing
the network as a MAC channel from the distributed sources to multiple-
antenna relay followed by a BC channel from the multiple antenna relay
to the distributed destinations. With distributed relays, the zero forc-
ing of interference must be accomplished in a distributed fashion. The
distributed zero forcing of interference is known by various names in lit-
erature including distributed orthogonalization, multi-user zero-forcing
and interference neutralization, all of which refer to the same essential
idea. An excellent overview of these techniques is presented in [11].
Of particular interest is the setting with a nite number of dis-
tributed relay nodes, especially when the number of relay nodes is
not enough to allow perfect distributed orthogonalization. For the
K R K setting, i.e., a K user layered interference channel where
communication takes place through R distributed relay nodes, Rankov
and Wittneben have shown in [122] that a necessary condition for
distributed orthogonalization is that R K(K 1) + 1, which is
identied as the minimum relay conguration. For example, in a 2
user interference channel with 3 relay nodes, it is possible to eliminate
all interference. The overconstrained network with fewer relays, the
2 2 2 interference channel, therefore becomes particularly inter-
esting. On the one hand the network min-cut outer bound is still 2
DoF, but the number of relays is evidently smaller than the minimum
relay conguration identied in [122] for distributed orthogonalization.
Here we review two distinct DoF-optimal approaches for this channel,
obtained in [51, 71]. While the rst approach is opportunistic, the sec-
ond approach shows that alignment of interference plays an interesting
role in facilitating the ultimate neutralization of interference without
requiring opportunistic schemes.
Figure 5.11 shows the 2 2 2 interference channel, where two
transmitters wish to send independent messages to their corresponding
receivers over a concatenation of two interference channels. While sev-
eral studies of this channel [135, 32] treat the two hops as interference
channels, it is evident that any such approach cannot achieve more
than 1 DoF (because the 2 user interference channel has only 1 DoF).
On the other hand, by treating it as a concatenation of two X channels,
Cadambe and Jafar have shown in [23] that 4/3 DoF can be achieved
almost surely. This requires that the sources split their messages into
two independent parts, one for each relay. The four independent mes-
sages transform the 2 2 2 IC into the X channel setting over each
hop and 4/3 DoF become achievable.
Fig. 5.11 The 2 2 2 interference channel.
An interesting idea called opportunistic interference neutralization
is introduced by Jeon et al. in [71]. Opportunistic interference neu-
tralization refers to the idea that the relays buer the symbols from
the rst hop and transmit them over the second hop only when the
channel matrices F and G for the two hops are complementary in the
sense that GF is a diagonal matrix. Essentially, the matrices invert
each other so that all interference, which corresponds to cross-terms
in the product matrix, is eliminated. For a fairly broad class of chan-
nels, including, e.g., i.i.d. Rayleigh fading channels, Jeon et al. show in
[71] that complementary matrices can be matched almost perfectly so
that the DoF = 2 can be achieved for the 2 2 2 IC. It is remark-
able that the network DoF min-cut outer bound of two is achievable
for such channels, considering that for one hop interference channels,
no more than half the min-cut is achievable [22, 57]. While the idea of
opportunistic interference neutralization is very powerful, like ergodic
interference alignment, it is limited to a special class of distributions
and in particular does not apply to constant channels.
For constant channels, Gou et al. [51] have recently introduced the
idea of aligned interference neutralization that is shown to achieve the
DoF = 2 outer bound for the 2 2 2 IC for almost all channel values.
We summarize the aligned interference neutralization scheme below.
For simplicity of exposition, and without loss of generality, let us nor-
malize F
11
= F
22
= G
11
= G
22
= 1.
Signaling is performed over M rational dimensions, within which
M signals from User 1 and M 1 signals from User 2 are sent, so that
a total of
2M1
M
DoF are achieved. Since M can be made arbitrarily
large, the DoF min-cut outer bound is achieved in the limit of large
M. Up to a scaling factor needed to satisfy power constraints, the
transmitted signals are constructed as
X
1
=
M
m=1
v
1,m
x
1,m
(5.6)
X
2
=
M1
m=1
v
2,m
x
2,m
(5.7)
Fig. 5.12 The 2 2 2 IC.
so that v
i,m
are the rational beamforming directions and x
i,m
are the
Q-ary coded symbols as explained in Section 4.7. The v
i,m
directions
are chosen according to Figure 5.12, so that v
2,i
= F
2,1
v
1,i
and v
1,i+1
=
F
12
v
2,i
.
Any choice of v
1,1
therefore determines all v
k,i
. The alignment of
signals along rational dimensions at Relays 1 and 2 is illustrated in the
table below:
At Relay 1:
dimension v1,1 v1,2 v1,3 v1,i+1 v
1,M
dimension F12v2,1 F12v2,2 F12v2,i F12v
2,M1
symbol x1,1 x1,2 + x2,1 x1,3 + x2,2 x1,i+1 + x2,i x
1,M
+ x
2,M1
At Relay 2:
dimension F21v1,1 F21v1,2 F21v1,i F21v
1,M1
F21v
1,M
dimension v2,1 v2,2 v2,i v
2,M1
symbol x1,1 +x2,1 x1,2 +x2,2 x1,i +x2,i x
1,M1
+x
2,M1
x
1,M
Each relay makes hard decisions on the aligned Q-ary symbols.
So, Relay 1 demodulates x
1,1
, x
1,2
+ x
2,1
, x
1,3
+ x
2,2
, . . . , x
1,i+1
+
x
2,i
, . . . , x
1,M
+ x
2,M1
while Relay 2 demodulates symbols x
1,1
+ x
2,1
,
x
1,2
+ x
2,2
, . . . , x
1,i
+ x
2,i
, x
1,M1
+ x
2,M1
, x
1,M
.
These demodulated symbols are sent over the second hop from each
relay, again in an aligned fashion similar to the rst hop but with
phase reversals chosen to cancel undesired symbols, as shown in Fig-
ure 5.13 where the top row of symbols corresponds to Destination 1
and the bottom row corresponds to Destination 2. Thus, for exam-
ple, symbol x
1,1
aligns with symbol x
1,1
+ x
2,1
at Destination 2 leav-
ing just the desired symbol x
2,1
, symbol (x
1,i
+ x
2,i1
) aligns with
x
1,i
+ x
2,i
leaving just the desired symbols x
2,i
x
2,i1
. The chain of
desired symbols can be successfully demodulated once all interfering
symbols are removed. At the same time, the alignments at Destination
1 force the symbol (x
1,1
+ x
2,1
) to align with x
1,2
+ x
2,1
, leaving only
Fig. 5.13 Aligned interference neutralization over the second Hop.
the desired symbols x
1,2
x
1,1
, the symbol (x
1,i
+ x
2,i
) aligns with
x
1,i+1
+ x
2,i
leaving only the desired symbols x
1,i+1
x
1,i
and so on, so
that the chain of desired symbols can be successively demodulated. The
error probability of these demodulations approaches zero for high SNR
according to the rational dimensions framework, so that the coded rate
for which probability of error can be made arbitrarily small approaches
a pre-log factor of 1/M per rational dimension. Thus, a total DoF of
2M1
M
are achieved, and in the limit of large M, the network min-cut
outer bound value of DoF = 2 is achieved as well. Gou et al. also show
that when restricted to linear beamforming techniques and constant
complex channel values, asymmetric complex signaling provides the
M = 2 vector dimensions along which aligned interference neutraliza-
tion can be used to achieve
2M1
M
= 1.5 DoF for almost all channel
coecient values, which is remarkably higher than the best known pre-
vious result of 4/3 DoF possible by viewing the two hops as X chan-
nels. The similarity of the alignment scheme with the [CJ08] scheme
is also remarkable, as they are both asymptotic and construct signal-
ing dimensions out of the products of integer powers of the channel
coecients.
Shomorony and Avestimehr in [134] initiate the DoF study of mul-
tihop layered interference networks with arbitrary connectivity within
each hop. With two source nodes S
1
, S
2
, two destination nodes D
1
, D
2
,
arbitrary number of relay nodes at each layer and arbitrary connec-
tivity between each pair of adjacent layers, there are four possible
independent unicast messages W
ij
, i, j 1, 2, such that W
ij
is the
message originating at source S
i
and intended for destination D
j
. If the
message set is restricted to W
11
, W
22
, we have a two-user multihop lay-
ered interference channel. For this channel Shomorony and Avestimehr
show that for almost all channel coecient values corresponding to all
possible layered network graphs, the DoF values can only belong to
the set 1,
3
2
, 2. An important concept of manageable interference is
introduced, which makes precise the condition under which interference
arriving from multiple paths can be neutralized. Also intriguing are the
wireless counterparts of the buttery and grail topologies previously
highlighted for wired multiple unicast setting [30, 132, 158]. However,
interference alignment appears to be essential only for the 2 2 2
setting described above, where the aligned interference neutralization
scheme of Gou et al. [51] is utilized over the rational dimensions frame-
work of [99].
Wang et al. in [154] explore the 2-source 2-sink layered multihop
network DoF when all possible unicast messages W
ij
, i, j 1, 2 are
allowed (also known as the X network setting). In this case, with
arbitrary number of relays at each hop, and arbitrary connectivity
between adjacent layers, the DoF are shown to belong to the set
1, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 2. Interference alignment plays a much more signif-
icant role in this setting. Figure 5.14 shows two networks with DoF
values 3/2 and 5/3 respectively, where interference alignment is used
to establish the achievability. The network on the left in Figure 5.14
has 3/2 DoF in the X setting but can only achieve 1 DoF in the inter-
ference channel setting where only two messages (either W
11
, W
22
, or
W
12
, W
21
) are allowed. The network on the right in Figure 5.14 has 5/3
DoF in the X setting but has only 1 DoF as the interference channel
with messages W
11
, W
22
, and only 3/2 DoF as the interference channel
with messages W
12
, W
21
. The interference alignment schemes for the
two networks in the X setting are illustrated in the gure.
Fig. 5.14 Interference alignment in 2-source 2-sink layered X networks.
Open Problem: While the aligned interference neutralization scheme
is shown to achieve the network min-cut DoF outer bound of the
2 2 2 IC, the DoF for extensions such as 3 3 3 IC are not
known except in the opportunistic interference neutralization setting.
Characterizations such as GDoF, capacity within constant gap etc. are
unknown for almost all multihop interference networks, with few excep-
tions [97]. These are promising research avenues for future studies on
the benets of interference alignment in wireless networks and may
also provide useful insights for solving the multiple unicasts network
coding problems which are also concerned with multihop interference
management issues.
5.9 Bidirectional Relay Interference Networks
Continuing with the theme of multihop interference networks, let us
now add the element of bidirectional communication. Two-way com-
munication with the help of one or more relay nodes is a topic that
has recently drawn much attention [4, 11, 28, 76, 77, 87, 121, 122, 129].
Remarkably, signal alignment is a key element of achievable rate strate-
gies of bi-directional relay interference networks. The alignment of
signals in this setting is explored in the signal level dimension with
the use of deterministic channel models and single antenna nodes by
Sezgin et al. in [129] and in the signal vector space dimension with the
use of linear beamforming with multiple antenna nodes by Lee et al.
in [87]. Here we summarize the signal vector space alignment approach
of Lee et al. where the need for alignment is evident from a DoF per-
spective. By analogy to the two-user case of Analog Network Coding
[76], we label this problem the Aligned Analog Network Coding prob-
lem in Figure 5.15.
The setting illustrated in Figure 5.15 consists of three nodes, each
equipped with two antennas, and six independent messages W
ij
, i, j
1, 2, 3 such that message W
ij
originates at node j and is intended
for node i. There are no direct links between these nodes. All commu-
nication must pass through a relay node that is equipped with three
antennas. The channel coecients are generic and may be regarded
as xed. Communication takes place in two phases an uplink phase
Fig. 5.15 Aligned analog network coding [87].
where all nodes transmit to the relay node and a downlink phase where
the relay transmits to all the nodes.
It is shown by Lee et al. in [87] that each of the six messages can
achieve 1 DoF over one channel use of the uplink phase and one chan-
nel use of the downlink phase. The need for alignment is understood
as follows. Consider node 1 and the downlink phase. There are six
messages mixed into the three-dimensional space available to the relay.
Out of these six messages there are two messages W
21
, W
31
that
are harmless to Node 1 in the sense that these messages originated at
Node 1, so they are known to Node 1, and therefore any interference
from these messages can be cancelled. That leaves four messages out
of which the two messages W
12
, W
13
are desired by Node 1, so that
these messages must not align, i.e., they must occupy one dimension
each at the relay. This leaves one dimension at the relay node and two
potentially harmful interfering messages W
23
, W
32
. Therefore W
23
and W
32
must align into one dimension. Arguing similarly for each
node, it is evident that W
ij
and W
ji
should align into one dimension at
the relay. Thus, six messages align into the three dimensions available
to the relay node. There remain two questions. First, is this alignment
possible?, and second, do the alignments allow each node to recover its
desired message?
To answer the rst question, consider, e.g., messages W
23
, W
32
, orig-
inating at nodes 2, 3 that need to align at the relay node. Nodes 2
and 3 each have two antennas while the relay has three antennas. In
other words, nodes 2 and 3 can each access a two-dimensional vec-
tor subspace out of the three-dimensional vector space visible to the
relay node. Under generic channel conditions, these two subspaces must
intersect in 2 + 2 3 dimensions, i.e., there is a one-dimensional sub-
space that must be accessible from both Node 2 and from Node 3. It is
this one-dimensional vector subspace, i.e., vector along which the sig-
nals for messages W
23
and W
32
will align. In fact this is the only vector
subspace along which such alignment is possible. Similarly, nodes 1, 2
cast two-dimensional shadows within the three-dimensional subspace
seen by the relay. These shadows must overlap in one dimension, which
will be the direction chosen by Nodes 1 and 2 to align their respec-
tive messages W
12
, W
21
, respectively. The same argument applies to
the alignment of messages W
13
, W
31
as well.
To answer the second question, we elaborate upon the transmission
scheme used by the relay in the downlink phase. The relay separates the
signal dimension along which W
23
, W
32
are aligned and rotates it into
a vector orthogonal to the two-dimensional subspace corresponding to
the 2 3 downlink channel of Node 1. Similarly, the relay separates
the signal dimension along which W
12
, W
21
are aligned and rotates it
into the direction of the zero forcing vector for Node 3 and separates
the signal dimension along which W
13
, W
31
are aligned and sends these
aligned messages along the zero forcing vector of Node 2. Note that
since the relay has three antennas and each node has only two antennas,
there is a unique zero-forcing direction for each node available to the
relay, i.e., the one-dimensional null space of the 2 3 channel matrix
for that node. By using these zero-forcing directions for the unde-
sired aligned messages, the relay ensures that in the downlink phase
the desired messages are resolvable as follows. Due to generic channel
conditions, Node 1 sees two linearly independent signal vectors, one
containing aligned messages W
12
, W
21
and the other containing aligned
messages W
13
, W
31
. Since Node 1 already knows messages W
21
, W
31
and
all the channel coecients it is able to remove the contribution from
these messages. Thus, Node 1 sees two linearly independent signals, one
containing the message W
12
and the other containing the message W
13
.
These are the two desired messages for Node 1, and thus, Node 1 is able
to resolve the two desired messages within the two-dimensional signal
space available to it. By symmetry of construction, the same argument
is applied to each node. In this manner each of the six messages is able
to reach its desired destination along a linearly independent dimension
over one channel use of the uplink and one channel use of the downlink,
achieving a total of 6 DoF over these two channel uses.
Open Problem: There is an abundance of open problems in the bidi-
rectional interference networks setting. From a DoF perspective, the
open problems include the DoF with generalized antenna congura-
tions in the setting of Figure 5.15 and the DoF with distributed relay
nodes. GDoF characterizations for MIMO bidirectional relay networks
are particularly interesting because of the need to combine the signal
level alignments shown to be necessary in [129] and the signal space
alignments shown to be necessary in [87].
5.10 Cooperative Interference Networks
Cooperation among nodes is widely recognized as a way to alleviate
interference in wireless networks. Instead of attempting a review of the
vast body of literature on cooperative communications we will point
the reader to excellent survey and tutorials such as [43, 84]. Our goal
in this section is to highlight some interesting aspects that primarily
concern interference alignment in cooperative interference networks.
If all channels are of comparable strength, then it is shown in [28, 57]
that there is no DoF benet from cooperation. Thus, the benets of
cooperation, at the DoF level, are enabled by the existence of hetero-
geneous links, such as backhaul links that do not compete for wireless
spectrum or stronger links between local clusters of nodes over a certain
hop that may be taken as ideal links if the bottleneck for the end to end
communication rate lies elsewhere. These ideal links may enable cogni-
tive settings, i.e., where some messages can be shared between nodes.
The presence of cognitive and cooperative transmitters and receivers in
a wireless interference network along with the localized nature of wire-
less connectivity creates many interesting problems where not only does
Fig. 5.16 Pairwise cooperative decoding under dierent connectivity models.
interference alignment play a signicant role, but also fundamentally
new aspects of interference alignment may come to light.
An example of a cooperative interference network is illustrated in
Figure 5.16 where four transmitters send four independent messages
W
1
, W
2
, W
3
, W
4
to four receivers. In decoding the messages, coopera-
tion is allowed between adjacent receivers in the sense that the decoder
for message W
1
has access to the received signals Y
n
1
, Y
n
2
from receivers
1 and 2, respectively; the decoder for message W
2
has access to Y
n
2
, Y
n
3
;
the decoder for message W
3
has access to Y
n
3
, Y
n
4
; and the decoder for
message W
4
has access to Y
n
4
, Y
n
1
. In this network, if all channel coe-
cients are nonzero, then Annapureddy et al. in [2] nd the DoF to be 2/3
per user, similar to the SIMO interference channel where each receiver
has two antennas. The achievability scheme is based on the [CJ08] align-
ment scheme, but involves several challenging aspects because of the
shared antennas which create spatial dependencies between the chan-
nel coecients of the equivalent SIMO interference channel. In other
words, the independence between desired channel coecients and inter-
ference carrying channel coecients, the basis for the assumption that
desired signals do not overlap with interference, does not hold when
receive antennas are shared by decoders. In fact if this setting is nat-
urally extended to more than four users then it can be shown that
there is a loss of DoF relative to the corresponding SIMO interference
channel. While the SIMO interference channel with two antennas at
each receiver continues to achieve 2/3 DoF per user, the DoF of the
fully connected ve user interference channel with pairwise cooperative
decoders is bounded above by 3/5 DoF per user. Another surprising
aspect of this setting, explored by Wang et al. in [155] is the role of
channel connectivity. Specically, suppose in Figure 5.16 the channel
coecients for all the red links are replaced by zeros, i.e., these links are
disconnected. Note that these links do not carry any desired message
information. For example, the red link from Transmitter 4 to Receiver 2
carries only message W
4
which is not desired by the decoder for either
message W
1
or W
2
, i.e., the two decoders that have access to Receiver 2.
Thus, one might expect that setting this link to zero will not reduce the
DoF. But as shown by [155] setting the red links to zero forces a DoF
outer bound of
3
5
per user, which is strictly smaller than the 2/3 DoF
per user achievable in the fully connected setting of Figure 5.16. Inter-
esting insights such as this, as well as the novel alignment schemes as
well as new outer bounds needed to account for shared antennas, make
this problem of great fundamental theoretical interest. The reciprocal
setting of cooperative transmitters is similarly interesting.
Another application of interference alignment in wireless networks
with wired backhaul links is the idea of interference alignment and
cancellation (IAC) introduced in the work of Gollakota et al. in [47].
An example of the IAC framework is illustrated in Figure 5.17, where a
two user MIMO interference channel is shown with all nodes equipped
with three antennas. In the absence of receiver cooperation it is known
that this channel can achieve only 3 DoF [65]. Now suppose there
is a mechanism through which the receivers can share their decoded
messages, i.e., once a message is decoded at a receiver the message
bits are communicated to the other receiver who can reconstruct the
Fig. 5.17 Interference alignment and cancellation [47].
interference due to that message and cancel it from its own received sig-
nal. Under this assumption, Figure 5.17 shows how User 1 can achieve 3
DoF while User 2 simultaneously achieves 2 DoF through IAC. Specif-
ically, User 1 communicates three messages, labeled as a, c, e in Fig-
ure 5.17, while User 2 communicates two messages, labeled b, d. The
signaling dimensions for these messages are picked so that a, b align
along the same signal vector at Receiver 2; b, c align along one signal
vector at Receiver 1; c, d align along one vector at Receiver 2; and d, e
align along one vector at Receiver 1. a does not align with anything at
Receiver 1. As shown in Figure 5.17 this creates three signaling vectors
at each receiver, which can be resolved from each other, but each vector
may contain up to two aligned messages. The decoding proceeds in the
sequence a, b, c, d, e. First, Receiver 1 decodes message a, which can be
resolved because it is not aligned with anything else. This decoded mes-
sage is made available to Receiver 2 through a backhaul link, allowing
Receiver 2 to cancel interference from a. Cancelling a allows Receiver 2
to decode message b, which was aligned only with a. The decoded mes-
sage b is then passed back to Receiver 1 who cancels the interference
from b to obtain an uninterfered dimension for its desired message c.
After Receiver 1 decodes message c this message is made known to
Receiver 2 who cancels interference from this message to obtain a clean
signal vector for decoding message d. Finally, message d is provided
to Receiver 1 who cancels the interference due to it and obtains a
clean signal dimension for message e, thus concluding the decoding
sequence.
Multiple antennas are not essential for the IAC scheme described
above. For example, the scheme can be similarly operated for a single
antenna two user interference channel with time-varying/frequency-
selective channel coecients. Over an M dimensional signal space
obtained by considering M time-slots or M frequency slots, User 1 can
obtain M DoF and User 2 can simultaneously obtain M 1 DoF with
the chain of alignments and cancellations described above, so that a
total of
2M1
M
DoF are achieved. Note that the achieved DoF approach
the value 2, which is the maximum DoF possible with full cooperation,
i.e., joint signal processing between the two receivers. Also remarkable
are the parallels between the chain of alignments and cancellations
described above, and the chain of alignments and cancellations used in
the aligned interference neutralization scheme of [51] presented earlier.
Open Problem: An interesting open problem is to characterize the
DoF of the K User interference channel with clustered cooperative
decoders, such as the setting illustrated in Figure 5.16 with K > 4 users.
The DoF with Wyner connectivity in this setting are also interesting,
as mentioned earlier, due to the new fundamental issues that arise
with shared antennas. The DoF duality of transmitter cooperation and
receiver cooperation is also an open problem.
5.11 Secrecy
As modern communication systems rely increasingly on wireless trans-
missions, security of the communicated information is a growing
concern. Fortunately, the idea of interference alignment leads to
naturally secure communication schemes. This is pointed out rst by
Koyluoglu et al. in [83] where the secure DoF of the K user interference
channel are determined. Combining random binning arguments needed
for secrecy along with the [CJ08] scheme needed for alignment it is
shown that the K user interference channel can achieve
K2
2K2
secure
DoF per user. The intuition for robustness to secrecy demands can be
understood as follows. As we know, the goal of interference alignment
is to allow the resolution of desired symbols even when the number
of symbols is much larger than the number of equations, by align-
ing the undesired symbols into the smallest possible subspace. While
the desired symbols are resolvable, interference alignment forces the
signal dimensions of undesired symbols to overlap, essentially forcing
undesired transmissions to jam each other, thereby naturally ensuring
that the undesired information is not decodeable. Similarly, with an
external eavesdropper whose channel state may not be known to the
transmitters, Koyluoglu et al. show in [83] that secure DoF of
K2
2K
are achievable per user. The intuition here may be understood as fol-
lows. Since no eort is made to align signals for the eavesdropper, the
eavesdropper sees essentially generic linear equations in the information
carrying symbols. Since the number of symbols far exceeds the number
of equations, none of the symbols can be resolved by the eavesdropper.
5.11 Secrecy 107
The probability of symbols accidentally aligning when passing through
generic channels is zero, and therefore security against the eavesdrop-
per is naturally available. In [49], Gou and Jafar develop corresponding
secure DoF results for the X network setting with M transmitters, N
receivers and MN independent messages, one from each transmitter
to each receiver. Here also the key ingredients are the random binning
scheme for secrecy in conjunction with the [CJ08] scheme for interfer-
ence alignment.
While Koyluoglu et al. in [83], as well as Gou et al. in [49] focus on
time-varying/frequency-selective channels, DoF benets of interference
alignment for the K user interference channel with constant channels
under secrecy constraints and certain symmetric assumptions are shown
by He and Yener in [56]. The key to He and Yeners work is the idea
of layered lattice alignment, previously applied by Sridharan et al. in
[136] to the same setting without secrecy constraints. A novel aspect
of [56] is the use of nested lattice codes instead of the sphere-shaped
lattice codes used in [136], which allows He and Yener to achieve higher
DoF than possible with the approach of Sridharan et al.
The secure DoF of the K user Gaussian MAC in the presence of
an eavesdropper, is explored by Bagherikaram et al. in [6]. It is shown
that secure DoF of
K1
K
is achievable, almost surely, by aligning the
signals at the eavesdropper so that they are not resolvable, while keep-
ing the signals distinguishable at the desired receiver. This can be
achieved through Gaussian codebooks and linear beamforming schemes
if the channels are time-varying/frequency-selective and through lattice
alignment within the rational dimensions framework of [99] if the chan-
nel coecient values are xed.
The two user MAC with an external eavesdropper is considered
by Bassily and Ulukus in [8] under the assumption of time varying
channels. Two schemes, called scaling based alignment (SBA) and
ergodic secret alignment (ESA) are proposed, both of which are capa-
ble of achieving 1/2 secure DoF per user, and both of which exploit
time-variations to achieve the alignment of signals at the eavesdropper.
In particular, the ESA scheme is motivated by the ergodic interfer-
ence alignment scheme of Nazer et al. [101] and achieves the stronger
rate performance of the two schemes. As usual, these schemes have
the advantage of providing explicit DoF guarantees, unlike the implicit
DoF characterizations of rational dimensions framework which can be
shown to hold for almost all channel coecients but cannot be explicitly
applied to any given values of channel coecients.
Interference alignment is also the key to the secure DoF characteri-
zation of a MISO compound wiretap channel explored by Khisti in [80].
In this setting there is a sender equipped with M antennas and two
sets of J
1
and J
2
receivers, and each receiver is equipped with only one
antenna. If one set of receivers is the legitimate set while the other con-
sists of eavesdroppers and the channels are generic, then Khisti shows
in [80] that secure DoF of 1 is achievable if min(J
1
, J
2
) < M and secure
DoF of
M1
M
is achievable if min(J
1
, J
2
) M. Another variant of this
problem is the compound private BC channel where each set of receivers
wants a message that should be kept secret from the other set. In this
setting, [80] shows that secure DoF of 2, 2
M1
M
, 2
M1
M+1
, are possible when
M is larger than max(J
1
, J
2
), between max(J
1
, J
2
) and min(J
1
, J
2
), or
smaller than min(J
1
, J
2
), respectively. The achievable scheme is based
on the application of [CJ08] scheme in the rational dimensions frame-
work of [99], and is similar to the compound MISO BC channel setting
explored earlier in [52, 93] without secrecy constraints.
6
Conclusion
Interference alignment is a relatively new idea in network informa-
tion theory that has enabled signicant progress in our understand-
ing of the capacity limits of many wireless and wired communication
networks. Correctly accounting for the number of signaling dimen-
sions the degrees of freedom is one of the rst steps toward a
capacity characterization. Interference alignment has shown that even
at this coarse level, theoretical limits can be orders of magnitudes higher
than previously thought possible, especially for large networks.
While, due to their asymptotic high SNR nature, DoF (and GDoF)
characterizations may seem of limited practical relevance, the surpris-
ing insights regarding new achievable schemes that emerge out of DoF
studies are their most useful and far-reaching outcomes. Put simply,
DoF characterizations may not provide us the recipe for a capacity
achieving scheme, but they do serve to identify the main ingredients
often surprising ones. To that extent, interference alignment has been
most successful as the connecting thread across a burst of innovative
techniques that include new ways to exploit symbol extensions, chan-
nel variations, asymmetric complex signaling, structured codes, rational
109
110 Conclusion
dimensions, opportunistic transmissions, channel correlations, delayed
feedback and recongurable antennas, as discussed in Sections 4 and 5.
The theoretical understanding of interference alignment is still not
fully developed. It is limited primarily to linear channel models like
Gaussian networks and linear deterministic frameworks. A represen-
tation of interference alignment in the classical discrete memoryless
framework is not yet available, nor is it clear if such a represen-
tation should exist. Indeed, with increasing evidence on the side of
structured coding techniques (in part due to the role of interference
alignment), the existence of single-letter capacity characterizations is
itself in question. Further, within the class of linear channel models
there are extremely interesting fundamental questions that are not
yet conclusively answered. For instance, is the bandwidth expansion
aspect of interference alignment schemes as noted in [55] fundamen-
tally inescapable? What signicance does the rational/irrational nature
of channel coecients have at nite SNR? Are linear schemes always
DoF optimal for generic time-varying channels and is the equivalence
between this setting and the rational dimensions framework for con-
stant channels an absolute equivalence? and are there new information
theoretic inequalities hidden in the fundamental rules for simultane-
ous unions and intersections of multiple linear vector subspaces? These
questions as well as the open problems mentioned throughout the paper
are only a small sample of the many intellectually intriguing issues to
be addressed by future work that are all centered around interference
alignment.
While in this monograph we focused primarily on theoretical issues,
there is an increasing body of work that explores practical challenges
faced in the implementation of available theoretical interference align-
ment schemes. These challenges include the overhead for acquiring
enough channel knowledge, the penalty of residual channel uncertainty
at the transmitters, impact of channel correlations, tracking the inter-
ference alignment solution under time varying channels etc., and have
been investigated by Thukral and Boelcskei in [144], Yu et al. in [164],
Niu and Haimovich in [108], Krishnamachari and Varanasi in [85], El
Ayach and Heath in [5], Peters and Heath in [117], Nosrat-Makouei
et al. in [109], and Lee et al. in [88]. As new theoretical ideas related
111
to interference alignment continue to emerge, it is expected that they
will similarly be put to test to measure their practical impact. It is
this convergence of theoretical and practical interests that continues to
accelerate the pace of progress on interference alignment schemes and
is likely to produce many more breakthroughs in the years to come.
A
Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
In a communication network with m independent messages
W
1
, W
2
, . . . , W
m
, the rate tuple (R
1
, R
2
, . . . , R
m
) is said to be achievable
if there exists a sequence of codebooks (with increasing code lengths)
such that the probability that any of the messages is decoded in error by
its desired destination, can be made arbitrarily small by choosing code-
words that are long enough. The closure of the set of all achievable rates
is called the capacity region. In Gaussian networks, the capacity region
depends on the local additive white Gaussian noise at each receiver, the
transmitted signal power available to each transmitter, and the channel
coecient values that scale each signal as it propagates from the trans-
mitters to the receivers. The DoF metric is primarily concerned with the
limit where the total transmit power approaches innity, while the val-
ues of channel coecients and the local noise power remain unchanged.
Thus, if we denote by C(P) the sum capacity with the total transmit
power P, then the DoF metric is dened as
= lim
P
C(P)
log(P)
, (A.1)
112
113
which is also equivalently stated as
C(P) = log(P) + o(log(P)), (A.2)
where the o(log(P)) term is some function f(P) such that
lim
P
f(P)
log(P)
= 0. (A.3)
It is worth pointing out as a cautionary note that it has not been
established that the limit involved in the DoF metric must exist for all
Gaussian networks with full CSI. Nevertheless, the signicance of the
DoF metric is widely recognized as a measure of the accessible signal
dimensions in a communication network. Next, we elaborate further on
this interpretation of DoF.
Consider a point-to-point Gaussian channel:
Y = HX + N,
where over a channel use Y is the output symbol, H is the channel
coecient, X is the channel input symbol, and N is the additive white
gaussian noise (AWGN) term. All symbols are complex. The input is
subject to the power constraint E[[X[
2
] P and the N is i.i.d circu-
larly symmetric complex Gaussian A
c
(0,
2
) across channel uses. The
capacity of this AWGN channel was shown by Shannon to be
C = log
_
1 + P
[H[
2
2
_
(A.4)
bits per channel use (the log is assumed to be to the base 2). It follows
then that
C = log(P) + o(log(P)). (A.5)
So this channel has one DoF. It is important to note that the channel
strength H and the noise power
2
are not relevant in this approxima-
tion, since they do not scale with P.
If we have M parallel AWGN channels
Y
m
= H
m
X
m
+ N
m
114 Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
with power constraint
1
M
M
m=1
E[[X[
2
m
] P (A.6)
and i.i.d. noise terms with noise powers
2
m
, where m 1, 2, . . . , M,
and all channel coecients are non zero then it is easy to see that the
total capacity of these channels
C = Mlog(P) + o(log(P)), (A.7)
i.e., we have M DoF. Once again the DoF measure only the number of
channels and not the channel strength or the noise power.
It is convenient to think of DoF as the number of signaling dimen-
sions, where 1 signal dimension corresponds to one interference-free
AWGN channel with SNR increasing proportionately with P as P
approaches innity. DoF are also known as the multiplexing gain since
they measure the number of signals multiplexed over the air. Further,
any signal carried by a wireless spectrum of two-sided baseband band-
width B (one-sided bandwidth =B/2) can be expressed by B freely
chosen samples per sec according to the NyquistShannon sampling
theorem, and subject to the power constraints and the noise oor, each
sample value can be seen as a signal dimension carrying 1 DoF. Thus,
DoF can be equivalently understood as the bandwidth, multiplexing
gain, number of signaling dimensions, or the capacity pre-log factor.
As such, the fundamental signicance of the DoF metric is evident.
B
Generalized Degrees of Freedom (GDoF)
An important limitation of the DoF metric is that it essentially forces
all channels to be equally strong, i.e., the ratio of the signal powers (in
dB scale) arriving on any two links approaches unity in the high SNR
limit. It therefore does not provide much insight into the optimal ways
to manage interference when some signals are signicantly stronger or
weaker than others. The generalized DoF metric serves precisely this
purpose. The GDoF metric retains the analytical tractability of DoF
as it explores the high SNR regime, but also fundamentally captures
the diversity of signal strengths by xing the ratios of dierent sig-
nal strengths (in dB scale) as all SNRs approach innity. A potential
diculty with the GDoF metric is the explosion of parameters if all
channels are assigned dierent relative strengths. Symmetric settings
that are easier to visualize are therefore of particular interest, in spite
of the obvious limitations imposed by the assumption of symmetry.
For example, consider the setting of Figure B.1 where the symmetric
two user interference channel is illustrated. The interference channel
has two independent messages W
1
, W
2
with message W
i
originating
at Transmitter i and intended for Receiver i, i = 1, 2, respectively.
115
116 Generalized Degrees of Freedom (GDoF)
Fig. B.1 Two-user symmetric interference channel GDoF setting.
Explicitly, the channel of Figure B.1 is dened by the inputoutput
equations:
Y
1
= h
d
PX
1
+ h
c
X
2
+ Z
1
(B.1)
Y
2
= h
c
X
1
+ h
d
PX
2
+ Z
2
(B.2)
with the powers of the input symbols X
1
, X
2
and AWGN terms Z
1
, Z
2
normalized to unity. Similar to the DoF denition, the total GDoF
metric, d(), is dened as
d() = lim
P
C(P, )
log(P)
, (B.3)
where C(P, ) is the sum-capacity parameterized by P, . Here is the
ratio (in dB scale) of cross channel strength relative to direct channel
strength. Note that the DoF metric corresponds to the point = 1
within the GDoF characterization. Thus, the GDoF picture greatly
broadens our understanding of optimal interference management tech-
niques. It has been used most successfully to approximate the capacity
of the two user interference channel to within a constant gap in [19, 40].
The GDoF curve of the symmetric two user interference channel of
Figure B.1 is the highly recognizable W curve shown in Figure B.2. It
greatly improves our understanding of the interference channel by iden-
tifying various regimes corresponding to very weak, weak, moder-
ately weak, strong and very strong interference each of which has its
own distinct character. Etkin et al. use the GDoF characterization as an
insightful intermediate step leading to a capacity approximation of the
two user interference channel that is accurate within one bit for all SNR
117
Fig. B.2 GDoF-per-user of the two-user symmetric interference channel the W curve
of Etkin et al. [40].
Fig. B.3 The manifestation of W curve. The plotted surface is a sum-rate capacityap-
proximation (divided by the number of users =2) that is accurate within a 1 bit gap.
values and all channel realizations. The appearance of the W curve
in this 1 bit-gap approximation is illustrated in Figure B.3 where an
achievable sum-rate (divided by the number of users) is plotted on the
vertical axis as a function of signal to noise ratio, SNR = [h
d
[
2
P and
interference-to-noise ratio, INR = [h
c
[
2
P
, both measured in dB scale.

The surface representing sum-rate per user becomes an outer bound on
achievable rates if elevated vertically by 1 bit, thus providing a capacity
approximation that is accurate within 1 bit. Note that no interference
alignment is needed for this one-bit-gap capacity approximation.
Extensions of the two user interference channel GDoF to multiple
antenna settings are explored in [75, 115], and the resulting GDoF
curve for the 2 user MIMO interference channel where each transmit-
ter is equipped with M antennas and each receiver is equipped with
N antennas, is illustrated in Figure B.4. Constant gap capacity approx-
imations are known in all cases of two user MIMO interference channel
[74, 143]. Interestingly, the magnitude of the approximation gap scales
in the number of antennas.
As another illustration of the GDoF metric, the natural generaliza-
tion of the two user symmetric interference channel, is the (1 N)
N+1
SIMO interference channel with N + 1 users, where each transmitter
has one antenna and each receiver has N antennas, all direct channels
have strength P and all cross channels have strength P
. The GDoF
of this setting are found by Gou and Jafar in [53] and are illustrated
Fig. B.4 GDoF curves for the two-user MIMO interference channel with M antennas at
each transmitter and N antennas at each receiver [75, 115].
119
Fig. B.5 The GDoF-per-user curve for the SIMO (1 N)
N+1
interference channel [53].
in Figure B.5. Clearly, setting N = 1 in this curve produces the W
curve of Figure B.2.
Just like the DoF characterizations, it is not only the GDoF value
but also the new insights enabled by GDoF characterizations that make
them particularly interesting. As an example, let us list some of the
interesting observations from comparing the GDoF curve of the two
user interference channel in Figure B.2 and the GDoF curve of its
generalization, the (1 N)
N+1
SIMO interference channel. Similar to
the two user interference channel, the (1 N)
N+1
SIMO interference
channel does not require interference alignment to achieve the GDoF
curve for N > 1. However, contrary to the two user interference channel
where treating interference as noise (i.e., sending only private messages)
is GDoF-optimal in the very weak interference regime, the (1 N)
N+1
SIMO interference channel does not possess a regime where treating
interference as noise is GDoF-optimal. The sub-optimality of treating
interference as noise is indicated in Figure B.5 by the strict dominance
of the GDoF curve over the line representing the achievable GDoF
with interference treated as noise. Also interesting is the observation
that the layered deterministic model of Avestimehr et al. [3], which
is the key to the GDoF characterization of the two user interference
channel found by Etkin et al. in [40], does not extend suciently to the
(1 N)
N+1
SIMO interference channel setting. Gou and Jafar instead
rely on an extension of an earlier deterministic interference channel
capacity result by El Gamal and Costa in [42] for their GDoF result.
It is interesting to note that the (1 N)
N+1
SIMO interference chan-
nel ends up being the natural setting to exploit an extension of the two
user deterministic interference channel setting of El Gamal and Costa,
mainly because the channel does not allow interference alignment in the
GDoF sense. Intuitively, this is because in the SIMO interference chan-
nel, after decoding its intended message and subtracting the decoded
codeword from the received signal, any receiver has N receive anten-
nas which provide the receiver N linearly independent equations in
the N interfering symbols. Thus, the interference dimensions remain
resolvable, i.e., cannot be aligned. Note that this is also, intuitively, the
characteristic of the deterministic interference channel setting studied
by El Gamal and Costa in [42], i.e., the interfering signal should be
resolvable from the received signal at any receiver, given the desired
signal. The (1 N)
N+1
SIMO interference channel setting is special
in this regard. On the one hand, if we decrease the number of users,
say (1 N)
N
, the GDoF characterization will become trivial, because
simple zero forcing will allow each user to access 1 DoF, i.e., its maxi-
mum interference-free value, regardless of the strength of interference.
This is because each receiver will have enough antennas to remove all
interference. On the other hand if we increase the number of users, say
(1 N)
N+2
, then interference alignment will play a central role in the
GDoF characterization, thereby fundamentally changing the character
of the problem. Finally, while the GDoF characterization for the two
user interference channel directly leads to a 1 bit gap capacity approx-
imation regardless of channel realizations and SNR, INR values, the
GDoF characterization of the (1 N)
N+1
SIMO interference channel
only produces a bounded gap capacity characterization, specically an
O(1) approximation, where the gap does not depend on SNR and INR
values (for almost all channel realizations) but the magnitude of the
gap depends on the channel realizations in general. This is easy to see,
121
because the (1 N)
N+1
SIMO interference channel, for some chan-
nel realizations, devolves into the SISO interference channel with more
than two users for which interference alignment is very much a fac-
tor in determining the capacity pre-log and no bounded gap capacity
characterizations are known.
References
[1] M. Aldridge, O. Johnson, and R. Piechocki, Asymptotic sum-capacity of
random Gaussian interference networks using interference alignment, in Pro-
ceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT),
2010, pp. 410414, IEEE, 2010.
[2] V. Annapureddy, A. El Gamal, and V. Veeravalli, Degrees of freedom of the
K-user interference channel with transmitter cooperation, in IEEE Interna-
tional Symposium on Information Theory Proceedings (ISIT) 2010, pp. 385
389, IEEE, 2010.
[3] A. S. Avestimehr, S. Diggavi, and D. Tse, Wireless Network Information
Flow: A Deterministic Approach, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory,
vol. 57, pp. 18721905, 2011.
[4] S. Avestimehr, A. Sezgin, and D. Tse, Capacity of the Two Way Relay Chan-
nel within a Constant Gap, European Transactions on Telecommunications,
vol. 21, pp. 363374, April 2010.
[5] O. E. Ayach and R. W. Heath, Jr., Interference alignment with ana-
log channel state feedback, CoRR, vol. abs/1010.2787, [Online]. Available:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.2787, 2010.
[6] G. Bagherikaram, A. S. Motahari, and A. K. Khandani, On the secure
degrees-of-freedom of the multiple-access-channel, CoRR, vol. abs/1003.0729,
[Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.0729, 2010.
[7] B. Bandemer, A. E. Gamal, and G. Vazquez-Vilar, On the sum capacity of
a class of cyclically symmetric deterministic interference channels, in IEEE
International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT, pp. 26222626, 2009.
[8] R. Bassily and S. Ulukus, Ergodic secret alignment, CoRR, vol. abs/
1010.6057, [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.6057, 2010.
122
References 123
[9] T. D. Bavirisetti, G. Abhinav, K. Prasad, and B. S. Rajan, A transform
approach to linear network coding for acyclic networks with delay, CoRR,
vol. abs/1103.3882, [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.3882, 2011.
[10] V. Beresnevich, A Groshev type theorem for convergence on manifolds, Acta
Mathematica Hungarica 94, vol. 12, pp. 99130, 2002.
[11] S. Berger, T. Unger, M. Kuhn, A. Klein, and A. Wittneben, Recent
advances in amplify-and-forward two-hop relaying, Communications
Magazine, [Online]. Available: http://www.nari.ee.ethz.ch/wireless/pubs/
p/CommMag08, July 2009.
[12] I. Bernik, D. Kleinbock, and G. Margulis, Khintchine-type theorems on man-
ifolds: The convergence case for standard and multiplicative versions, Inter-
national Mathematics Research Notices, vol. 9, pp. 453386, 2001.
[13] Y. Birk and T. Kol, Informed-source coding-on-demand (ISCOD) over broad-
cast channels, in Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Joint Conference
of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, IEEE INFOCOM98,
pp. 12571264, 1998.
[14] Y. Birk and T. Kol, Coding on demand by an informed source (ISCOD) for
ecient broadcast of dierent supplemental data to caching clients, IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 52, no. 6, pp. 28252830, June
2006.
[15] H. Boelcskei, R. Nabar, O. Oyman, and A. Paulraj, Capacity scaling laws
in MIMO relay networks, Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 5,
no. 6, pp. 14331444, June 2006.
[16] S. Borade, L. Zheng, and R. Gallager, Maximizing degrees of freedom in wire-
less networks, in Proceedings of 40th Annual Allerton Conference on Com-
munication, Control and Computing, pp. 561570, October 2003.
[17] G. Bresler, D. Cartwright, and D. Tse, Settling the feasibility of interference
alignment for the MIMO interference channel: The symmetric square
case, CoRR, vol. abs/1104.0888, [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/
1104.0888, 2011.
[18] G. Bresler, A. Parekh, and D. Tse, The approximate capacity of the many-
to-one and one-to-many Gaussian interference channels, IEEE Transactions
on Information Theory, vol. 56, pp. 45664592, September 2010.
[19] G. Bresler and D. Tse, The two-user Gaussian interference channel: A deter-
ministic view, European Transactions in Telecommunications, vol. 19, no. 4,
pp. 333354, June 2008.
[20] G. Bresler and D. Tse, 3 user interference channel: Degrees of freedom as a
function of channel diversity, in 47th Annual Allerton Conference on Com-
munication, Control, and Computing, pp. 265271, 2009.
[21] V. Cadambe, C. Huang, S. A. Jafar, and J. Li, Optimal repair of
MDS codes in distributed storage via subspace interference alignment,
Arxiv preprint arXiv:1106.1250, [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/pdf/
1106.1250v1, 2011.
[22] V. Cadambe and S. Jafar, Interference alignment and the degrees of free-
dom of the K user interference channel, IEEE Transactions on Information
Theory, vol. 54, no. 8, pp. 34253441, August 2008.
124 References
[23] V. Cadambe and S. Jafar, Interference alignment and the degrees of freedom
of wireless X networks, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, no. 9,
pp. 38933908, September 2009.
[24] V. Cadambe and S. Jafar, Parallel Gaussian interference channels are not
always separable, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 55, no. 9,
pp. 39833990, 2009.
[25] V. Cadambe and S. Jafar, Sum-capacity and the unique separability of the
parallel Gaussian MAC-Z-BC network, in Proceedings of IEEE International
Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2010, pp. 23182322, 2010.
[26] V. Cadambe, S. Jafar, and S. Shamai, Interference alignment on the deter-
ministic channel and application to Gaussian networks, IEEE Transactions
on Information Theory, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 269274, January 2009.
[27] V. Cadambe, S. Jafar, and C. Wang, Interference alignment with asymmetric
complex signaling settling the Hst-MadsenNosratinia conjecture, IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 56, no. 9, pp. 45524565, 2010.
[28] V. R. Cadambe and S. A. Jafar, Degrees of freedom of wireless networks with
relays, feedback, cooperation and full duplex operation, IEEE Transactions
on Information Theory, vol. 55, pp. 23342344, May 2009.
[29] V. R. Cadambe, S. A. Jafar, and H. Maleki, Distributed data storage with
minimum storage regenerating codes exact and functional repair are asymp-
totically equally ecient, CoRR, vol. abs/1004.4299, [Online]. Available:
[30] K. Cai, K. Letaief, P. Fan, and R. Feng, On the solvability of 2-pair unicast
networksA cut-based characterization, Arxiv preprint arXiv:1007.0465,
2010.
[31] G. Caire and S. Shamai, On the achievable throughput of a multiantenna
Gaussian broadcast channel, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory,
vol. 49, no. 7, pp. 16911706, July 2003.
[32] Y. Cao and B. Chen, Capacity bounds for two-hop interference networks,
47th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Comput-
ing, vol. abs/0910.1532, [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/ 0910.1532,
2009.
[33] S. Chen and R. Cheng, Achieve the degrees of freedom of K-User MIMO
interference channel with a MIMO relay, in IEEE GLOBECOM, December
2010.
[34] S. W. Choi and S.-Y. Chung, On the separability of parallel Gaus-
sian interference channels, Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium
on Information Theory (ISIT 2009), pp. 25922596, [Online]. Available:
[35] B. Da and R. Zhang, Exploiting interference alignment in multi-cell coopera-
tive OFDMA resource allocation, CoRR, vol. abs/1103.3093, [Online]. Avail-
able: http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.3093, 2011.
[36] A. K. Das, S. Vishwanath, S. A. Jafar, and A. Markopoulou, Net-
work coding for multiple unicasts: An interference alignment approach,
CoRR, vol. abs/1008.0235, [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.
0235, 2010.
References 125
[37] A. G. Dimakis, K. Ramchandran, Y. Wu, and C. Suh, A survey on network
codes for distributed storage, Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 99, pp. 476489,
[38] C. Esli and A. Wittneben, A hierarchical AF protocol for dis-
tributed orthogonalization in multiuser relay networks, IEEE Transac-
tions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 59, pp. 39023916, [Online]. Available:
http://www.nari.ee.ethz.ch/wireless/pubs/p/esli tvt 2010, August 2010.
[39] R. Etkin and E. Ordentlich, The degrees-of-freedom of the K-User Gaussian
interference channel is discontinuous at rational channel coecients, IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 55, pp. 49324946, November 2009.
[40] R. Etkin, D. Tse, and H. Wang, Gaussian interference channel capacity to
within one bit, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 54, no. 12,
pp. 55345562, 2008.
[41] G. J. Foschini and M. J. Gans, On limits of wireless communications in a fad-
ing environment when using multiple antennas, Wireless Personal Commun.
: Kluwer Academic Press, no. 6, pp. 311335, 1998.
[42] A. E. Gamal and M. Costa, The capacity region of a class of determinis-
tic interference channels, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 2,
pp. 343346, March 1982.
[43] D. Gesbert, S. Hanly, H. Huang, S. Shitz, O. Simeone, and W. Yu, Multi-cell
MIMO cooperative networks: A new look at interference, IEEE Journal on
Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 28, no. 9, pp. 13801408, December
2010.
[44] A. Ghasemi, A. Motahari, and A. Khandani, Interference alignment for the K
user MIMO interference channel, in Proceedings of International Symposium
on Information Theory (ISIT), pp. 360364, IEEE, 2010.
[45] A. Goldsmith, S. A. Jafar, N. Jindal, and S. Vishwanath, Capacity limits
of MIMO channels, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications,
vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 684702, June 2003.
[46] A. Goldsmith and P. Varaiya, Capacity of fading channels with channel side
information, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 43, pp. 1986
1992, November 1997.
[47] S. Gollakota, S. Perli, and D. Katabi, Interference alignment and cancella-
tion, in Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2009 conference on Data com-
munication, pp. 159170, ACM, 2009.
[48] K. Gomadam, V. Cadambe, and S. Jafar, A distributed numerical approach
to interference alignment and applications to wireless interference networks,
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, pp. 33093322, June 2011.
[49] T. Gou and S. Jafar, On the secure degrees of freedom of wireless X net-
works, in Proceedings of 46th Annual Allerton Conference on Communica-
tion, Control and Computing, September 2008.
[50] T. Gou and S. Jafar, Degrees of freedom of the K user M N MIMO inter-
ference channel, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 56, no. 12,
pp. 60406057, December 2010.
[51] T. Gou, S. Jafar, S. Jeon, and S. Chung, Aligned interference neutralization
and the degrees of freedom of the 2 2 2 interference channel, Proceedings
126 References
of IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), [Online].
Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.2350, 2011.
[52] T. Gou, S. Jafar, and C. Wang, Degrees of freedom of nite state com-
pound wireless networks, To Appear in the IEEE Transactions on Infor-
mation Theory. Full paper available at arXiv:0909.4203, [Online]. Available:
[53] T. Gou and S. A. Jafar, Capacity of a class of symmetric SIMO Gaus-
sian interference channels within O (1), IEEE Transactions on Information
Theory, vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 19321958, April 2011.
[54] T. Gou, C. Wang, and S. A. Jafar, Aiming perfectly in the dark Blind
interference alignment through staggered antenna switching, IEEE Transac-
tions on Signal Processing, vol. 59, pp. 27342744, June 2011.
[55] L. Grokop, D. Tse, and R. Yates, Interference alignment for line-of-sight
channels, CORR, vol. 0809.3035, [online]. Available: http://arXiv:cs.IT/
0809.3035, 2008.
[56] X. He and A. Yener, K-user interference channels: Achievable secrecy rate
and degrees of freedom, CoRR, vol. abs/0905.2643, [Online]. Available:
[57] A. Host-Madsen and A. Nosratinia, The multiplexing gain of wireless net-
works, in Proceedings of ISIT, 2005.
[58] C. Huang, V. Cadambe, and S. Jafar, On the capacity and generalized degrees
of freedom of the X channel, arxiv:0810.4741, October 2008.
[59] C. Huang, S. A. Jafar, S. Shamai, and S. Vishwanath, On degrees of freedom
region of MIMO networks without CSIT, CoRR, vol. abs/0909.4017, [Online].
[60] H. Huang, V. Lau, Y. Du, and S. Liu, Robust lattice alignment for K-user
MIMO interference channels with imperfect channel knowledge, IEEE Trans-
actions on Signal Processing, vol. 59, pp. 33153325, 2011.
[61] S. Jafar, Too much mobility limits the capacity of wireless ad-hoc networks,
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 52, no. 7, pp. 39543965,
November 2005.
[62] S. Jafar, Degrees of Freedom on the MIMO X channel- optimality of
the MMK scheme, CoRR, vol. abs/cs/0607099v2, [Online]. Available:
http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0607099v2, September 2006.
[63] S. Jafar, Exploiting channel correlations Simple interference alignment
schemes with no CSIT, Preprint available on Arxiv arXiv:0910.0555, October
2009.
[64] S. Jafar and V. Cadambe, Degrees of freedom of wireless networks what
a dierence delay makes, in Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and
Computers, Pacic Grove, CA, November 2007.
[65] S. Jafar and M. Fakhereddin, Degrees of freedom for the MIMO interference
channel, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 53, no. 7, pp. 2637
2642, July 2007.
[66] S. Jafar and A. Goldsmith, Isotropic fading vector broadcast channels: the
scalar upperbound and loss in degrees of freedom, IEEE Transactions on
Information Theory, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 848857, March 2005.
References 127
[67] S. Jafar and S. Shamai, Degrees of freedom region for the MIMO X chan-
nel, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 151170,
January 2008.
[68] S. Jafar and S. Vishwanath, Generalized degrees of freedom of the symmetric
gaussian K user interference channel, IEEE Transactions on Information
Theory, vol. 56, no. 7, pp. 32973303, July 2010.
[69] S. A. Jafar, The ergodic capacity of interference networks, CoRR,
[70] S.-W. Jeon and S.-Y. Chung, Capacity of a class of multi-source
relay networks, CoRR, vol. abs/0907.2510, [Online]. Available:
[71] S.-W. Jeon, S.-Y. Chung, and S. Jafar, Degrees of freedom region of a class
of multisource Gaussian relay networks, IEEE Transactions on Information
Theory, vol. 57, pp. 30323044, May 2011.
[72] O. Johnson, M. Aldridge, and R. Piechocki, Interference alignment-based
sum capacity bounds for random dense Gaussian interference networks, IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 57, pp. 282290, [Online]. Available:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.0208, January 2011.
[73] O. Johnson, M. Aldridge, and R. J. Piechocki, Delay-rate tradeo in
ergodic interference alignment, CoRR, vol. abs/1004.0208, [Online]. Avail-
able: http:// arxiv.org/abs/1004.0208, 2010.
[74] S. Karmakar and M. K. Varanasi, Capacity of the MIMO interference channel
to within a constant gap, CoRR, vol. abs/1102.0267, [Online]. Available:
[75] S. Karmakar and M. K. Varanasi, The Generalized Degrees of Freedom
Region of the MIMO Interference Channel, CoRR, vol. abs/1103.2560,
[76] S. Katti, S. Gollakota, and D. Katabi, Embracing wireless interference: Ana-
log network coding, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review,
vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 397408, 2007.
[77] S. Katti, H. Rahul, W. Hu, D. Katabi, M. Medard, and J. Crowcroft, XORs
in the air: practical wireless network coding, IEEE/ACM Transactions on
Networking (TON), vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 497510, 2008.
[78] L. Ke, A. Ramamoorthy, Z. Wang, and H. Yin, Degrees of Freedom
Region for an Interference Network with General Message Demands, CoRR,
[79] L. Ke and Z. Wang, Degrees of Freedom Regions of Two-User MIMO Z and
Full Interference Channels: The Benet of Recongurable Antennas, ArXiv
e-prints, November 2010.
[80] A. Khisti, Interference Alignment for the Multi-Antenna Compound Wiretap
Channel, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 57, pp. 29762993,
May 2011.
[81] J. C. Koo, W. Wu, and J. T. G. III, Delay-rate tradeo for ergodic inter-
ference alignment in the Gaussian case, 48th Annual Allerton Conference on
Communication, Control, and Computing, vol. abs/1001.2582, pp. 10691075,
128 References
[82] J. Korner and K. Marton, How to encode the modulo-two sum of binary
sources, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 25, pp. 219221,
March 1979.
[83] O. O. Koyluoglu, H. E. Gamal, L. Lai, and H. V. Poor, Interference
Alignment for Secrecy, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 57,
pp. 33233332, June 2011.
[84] G. Kramer, I. Maric, and R. Yates, Cooperative communications, Founda-
tions and Trends R in Networking, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 271425, 2006.
[85] R. T. Krishnamachari and M. K. Varanasi, Interference Alignment
Under Limited Feedback for MIMO Interference Channels, CoRR,
[86] A. Lapidoth, S. Shamai, and M. Wigger, On the capacity of Fading MIMO
broadcast channels with imperfect transmitter side-information, in Proceed-
ings of 43rd Annual Allerton Conference on Communications, Control and
Computing, pp. 2830, September 2005.
[87] N. Lee, J. Lim, and J. Chun, Degrees of freedom of the MIMO Y channel: sig-
nal space alignment for network coding, IEEE Transactions on Information
Theory, vol. 56, no. 7, pp. 33323342, 2010.
[88] N. Lee, W. Shin, and B. Clerckx, Interference Alignment with Lim-
ited Feedback on Two-cell Interfering Two-User MIMO-MAC, CoRR,
[89] M. Maddah-Ali, A. Motahari, and A. Khandani, Communication over X
channel: Signaling and Performance Analysis, in Technical Report. UW-ECE-
2006-27, University of Waterloo, December 2006.
[90] M. Maddah-Ali, A. Motahari, and A. Khandani, Communication over X
channel: Signalling and multiplexing gain, in Technical Report. UW-ECE-
2006-12, University of Waterloo, July 2006.
[91] M. Maddah-Ali, A. Motahari, and A. Khandani, Signaling over MIMO multi-
base systems - combination of multi-access and broadcast schemes, in Pro-
ceedings of ISIT, pp. 21042108, July 2006.
[92] M. Maddah-Ali, A. Motahari, and A. Khandani, Communication over MIMO
X Channels: Interference Alignment, Decomposition, and Performance Anal-
ysis, in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, pp. 34573470, August
2008.
[93] M. A. Maddah-Ali, The Degrees of Freedom of the Compound MIMO Broad-
cast Channels with Finite States, CoRR, vol. abs/0909.5006, [Online]. Avail-
able: http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.5006, 2009.
[94] M. A. Maddah-Ali and D. Tse, On the Degrees of Freedom of MISO
Broadcast Channels with Delayed Feedback, Technical Report UCB/EECS-
2010-122, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, [Online].
Available: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2010/EECS-2010-
122.html, September 2010.
[95] H. Maleki, S. A. Jafar, and S. Shamai, Retrospective Interfer-
ence Alignment, CoRR, vol. abs/1009.3593, [Online]. Available: http://
arxiv.org/abs/1009.3593, 2010.
References 129
[96] R. Mathar and M. Zivkovic, How to position n transmitter-receiver pairs in
n-1 dimensions such that each can use half of the channel with zero inter-
ference from the others, in Global Telecommunications Conference, 2009.
GLOBECOM 2009. IEEE, pp. 14, IEEE, 2010.
[97] S. Mohajer, S. Diggavi, C. Fragouli, and D. Tse, Approximate Capacity of a
Class of Gaussian Interference-Relay Networks, IEEE Transactions on Infor-
mation Theory, vol. 57, pp. 28372864, May 2011.
[98] V. Morgenshtern and H. Bolcskei, Crystallization in large wireless networks,
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 53, no. 10, pp. 33193349,
[Online]. Available: http://www.nari.ee.ethz.ch/commth/ pubs/p/transit06,
October 2007.
[99] A. Motahari, S. Gharan, M. Maddah-Ali, and A. Khandani, Real Interfer-
ence Alignment: Exploiting the Potential of Single Antenna Systems, CoRR,
[100] B. Nazer and M. Gastpar, Compute-and-Forward: Harnessing Interference
through Structured Codes, CoRR, vol. abs/0908.2119, [Online]. Available:
[101] B. Nazer, M. Gastpar, S. Jafar, and S. Vishwanath, Ergodic Interference
Alignment, in ISIT, 2009.
[102] B. Nazer, M. Gastpar, S. Jafar, and S. Vishwanath, Interference alignment
at nite SNR: General message sets, in 47th Annual Allerton Conference on
Communication, Control, and Computing, pp. 843848, IEEE, 2009.
[103] B. Nazer, A. Sanderovich, M. Gastpar, and S. Shamai, Structured Superpo-
sition for Backhaul Constrained Cellular Uplink, in IEEE ISIT 2009, June
July 2009.
[104] F. Negro, S. Shenoy, D. Slock, and I. Ghauri, Interference alignment limits for
K-user frequency-at MIMO interference channels, in Proceedings European
Signal Proc. Conf.(Eusipco), 2009.
[105] U. Niesen, Interference alignment in dense wireless networks, IEEE Trans-
actions on Information Theory, vol. 57, pp. 28892901, [Online]. Available:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.0868, May 2011.
[106] U. Niesen and P. Whiting, The Degrees of Freedom of Compute-
and-Forward, CoRR, vol. abs/1101.2182, [Online]. Available:
[107] H. Ning, C. Ling, and K. Leung, Relay-aided interference alignment:
Feasibility conditions and algorithm, in IEEE International Symposium on
Information Theory Proceedings (ISIT), pp. 390394, IEEE, 2010.
[108] B. Niu and A. Haimovich, Interference subspace tracking for network interfer-
ence alignment in cellular systems, in Global Telecommunications Conference,
2009. GLOBECOM 2009. IEEE, pp. 15, IEEE, 2010.
[109] B. Nosrat-Makouei, J. G. Andrews, and R. W. H. Jr., MIMO Interfer-
ence Alignment Over Correlated Channels with Imperfect CSI, CoRR,
[110] B. Nourani, S. Motahari, and A. Khandani, Relay-aided interference align-
ment for the quasi-static X channel, in IEEE International Symposium on
Information Theory, ISIT, pp. 17641768, IEEE, 2009.
130 References
[111] B. Nourani, S. Motahari, and A. Khandani, Relay-aided Interference Align-
ment for the quasi-static interference channel, in IEEE International Sym-
posium on Information Theory Proceedings (ISIT), pp. 405409, IEEE, 2010.
[112] D. Papailiopoulos and A. Dimakis, Interference alignment as a rank con-
strained rank minimization, IEEE GLOBECOM, December 2010.
[113] D. Papailiopoulos and A. Dimakis, Distributed Storage Codes through
Hadamard Designs, Arxiv preprint arXiv:1106.1652, [Online]. Available:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.1652, 2011.
[114] J. Park, Y. Sung, and V. Poor, On Beamformer Design for Mul-
tiuser MIMO Channels, CoRR, vol. abs/1011.6121, [Online]. Available:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.6121, November 2010.
[115] P. Parker, D. Bliss, and V. Tarokh, On the Degrees-of-Freedom of the MIMO
Interference Channel, in 42nd Annual Conference on Information Sciences
and Systems (CISS), March 2008.
[116] S. Peters and R. Heath, Interference alignment via alternating minimization,
in IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing,
2009. ICASSP 2009, pp. 24452448, IEEE, 2009.
[117] S. W. Peters and R. W. Heath, Jr., User partitioning for less overhead in
MIMO interference channels, CoRR, vol. abs/1007.0512, [Online]. Available:
[118] S. W. Peters and R. W. Heath Jr., Cooperative Algorithms for MIMO
Interference Channels, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 60,
pp. 206218, January 2011.
[119] T. Philosof and R. Zamir, On the loss of single-letter characterization: the
dirty multiple access channel, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory,
vol. 55, no. 6, pp. 24422454, 2009.
[120] A. Ramakrishnan, A. Das, H. Maleki, A. Markopoulou, S. Jafar, and S. Vish-
wanath, Network coding for three unicast sessions: Interference alignment
approaches, Allerton Conference on Communications, Control and Comput-
ing, October 2010.
[121] B. Rankov and A. Wittneben, Achievable rate regions for the
two-way relay channel, in Proceedings IEEE International Sympo-
sium on Information Theory (ISIT), July 2006. [Online]. Available:
http://www.nari.ee.ethz.ch/wireless/pubs/p/isit2006.
[122] B. Rankov and A. Wittneben, Spectral ecient protocols for half-duplex
fading relay channels, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications,
[Online]. Available: http://www.nari.ee.ethz.ch/wireless/ pubs/p/jsac2006,
February 2007.
[123] M. Razaviyayn, G. Lyubeznik, and Z. Luo, On the degrees of freedom achiev-
able through interference alignment in a MIMO interference channel, CoRR,
vol. abs/1104.0992, [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0992,
2011.
[124] M. Razaviyayn, M. Sanjabi, and Z.-Q. Luo, Linear Transceiver Design
for Interference Alignment: Complexity and Computation, 2010 IEEE
Eleventh International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in
References 131
Wireless Communications (SPAWC), vol. abs/1009.3481, [Online]. Available:
[125] S. Saha and R. Berry, On the Sum Capacity of a Class of 3 User Determin-
istic Interference Channels, in Forty-Eighth Annual Allerton Conference on
Communication, Control and Computing, September 2010.
[126] L. Sankar, X. Shang, E. Erkip, and H. Poor, Ergodic Fading Interference
Channels: Sum-Capacity and Separability, IEEE Transactions on Informa-
tion Theory, vol. 57, pp. 26052626, May 2011.
[127] D. Schmidt, C. Shi, R. Berry, M. Honig, and W. Utschick, Minimum mean
squared error interference alignment, in Conference Record of the Forty-Third
Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, 2009, pp. 1106
1110, IEEE, 2010.
[128] D. Schmidt, W. Utschick, and M. Honig, Large System Performance of
Interference Alignment in Single-Beam MIMO Networks, in IEEE Global
Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM) 2010, December 2010.
[129] A. Sezgin, A. S. Avestimehr, M. A. Khajehnejad, and B. Hassibi,
Divide-and-conquer: Approaching the capacity of the two-pair bidirectional
Gaussian relay network, CoRR, vol. abs/1001.4271, [Online]. Available:
[130] N. B. Shah, K. V. Rashmi, P. V. Kumar, and K. Ramchandran, Explicit
Codes Minimizing Repair Bandwidth for Distributed Storage, CoRR,
2009.
[131] H. Shen, B. Li, M. Tao, and Y. Luo, The new interference alignment scheme
for the MIMO interference channel, in Wireless Communications and Net-
working Conference (WCNC), 2010 IEEE, pp. 16, IEEE, 2010.
[132] S. Shenvi and B. Dey, A simple necessary and sucient condition for the dou-
ble unicast problem, in IEEE International Conference on Communications
(ICC), 2010, pp. 15, IEEE, 2010.
[133] W. Shin, N. Lee, J. B. Lim, C. Shin, and K. Jang, Interference align-
ment through user cooperation for two-cell MIMO interfering broadcast
channels, CoRR, vol. abs/1011.3867, [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/
abs/1011.3867, 2010.
[134] I. Shomorony and S. Avestimehr, Two-Unicast Wireless Networks: Charac-
terizing the Sum Degrees of Freedom, CoRR, vol. abs/1102.2498, [Online].
[135] O. Simeone, O. Somekh, Y. Bar-Ness, H. V. Poor, and S. Shamai,
Capacity of Linear Two-hop Mesh Networks with Rate Splitting, Decode-
and-forward Relaying and Cooperation, roceedings of the 45th Annual
Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing, Monticello,
IL, vol. abs/0710.2553, [Online]. Available: http://arxiv. org/abs/0710.2553,
September 2007.
[136] S. Sridharan, A. Jafarian, S. Vishwanath, and S. Jafar, Capacity of Sym-
metric K-User Gaussian Very Strong Interference Channels, in Proceedings
of IEEE GLOBECOM, December 2008.
132 References
[137] C. Suh and K. Ramchandran, Exact Regeneration Codes for Distributed
Storage Repair Using Interference Alignment, CoRR, vol. abs/1001.0107,
[138] C. Suh and K. Ramchandran, On the Existence of Optimal Exact-Repair
MDS Codes for Distributed Storage, CoRR, vol. abs/1004.4663, [Online].
[139] C. Suh and D. Tse, Interference Alignment for Cellular Networks, in Pro-
ceedings of 40th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and
Computing, September 2008.
[140] I. Tamo, Z. Wang, and J. Bruck, MDS array codes with optimal rebuilding,
in IEEE ISIT 2011, JulyAugust 2011.
[141] R. Tannious and A. Nosratinia, The interference channel with MIMO relay:
Degrees of freedom, in IEEE International Symposium on Information The-
ory, (ISIT) 2008, pp. 19081912, IEEE, 2008.
[142] E. Telatar, Capacity of Multi-antenna Gaussian Channels, European Trans-
actions on Telecomm. ETT, vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 585596, November 1999.
[143] E. Telatar and D. Tse, Bounds on the capacity region of a class of interference
channels, in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Information
Theory (ISIT), 2007.
[144] J. Thukral and H. Boelcskei, Interference alignment with limited feedback,
in Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Information
Theory (ISIT), pp. 17591763, 2009.
[145] M. Torbatian, H. Naja, and O. Damen, Asynchronous Interference Channel:
Degrees of Freedom and Interference Alignment, CoRR, vol. abs/1101.0275,
[146] R. Tresch, M. Guillaud, and E. Riegler, On the achievability of interference
alignment in the K-user constant MIMO interference channel, in IEEE/SP
15th Workshop on Statistical Signal Processing, 2009. SSP09., pp. 277280,
IEEE, 2009.
[147] D. Tse, P. Viswanath, and L. Zheng, Diversity-multiplexing tradeo in
multiple-access channels, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 50,
no. 9, pp. 18591874, Sept 2004.
[148] C. S. Vaze and M. K. Varanasi, The Degrees of Freedom Regions of MIMO
Broadcast, Interference, and Cognitive Radio Channels with No CSIT,
CoRR, vol. abs/0909.5424, 2009.
[149] C. S. Vaze and M. K. Varanasi, The Degrees of Freedom Region
and Interference Alignment for the MIMO Interference Channel
with Delayed CSI, CoRR, vol. abs/1101.5809, [Online]. Available:
[150] C. S. Vaze and M. K. Varanasi, The Degrees of Freedom Region
of the Two-User MIMO Broadcast Channel with Delayed CSI, CoRR,
2011.
[151] S. Vishwanath, N. Jindal, and A. Goldsmith, Duality, Achievable Rates, and
Sum-Rate Capacity of MIMO Broadcast Channels, IEEE Transactions on
Information Theory, pp. 28952909, October 2003.
References 133
[152] P. Viswanath and D. Tse, Sum capacity of the vector Gaussian broadcast
channel and uplink-downlink duality, IEEE Transactions on Information
Theory, pp. 19121921, August 2003.
[153] C. Wang, T. Gou, and S. Jafar, Interference Alignment through Staggered
Antenna Switching for MIMO BC with no CSIT, in Asilomar Conference on
Signals, Systems and Computers, November 2010.
[154] C. Wang, T. Gou, and S. Jafar, Multiple Unicast Capacity of 2-
Source 2-Sink Networks, CoRR, vol. abs/1104.0954, [Online]. Available:
[155] C. Wang, S. Jafar, S. Shamai, and M. Wigger, Interference, Cooperation and
Connectivity - A Degrees of Freedom Perspective, CoRR, vol. abs/1103.6060,
[156] C. Wang, H. Papadopoulos, S. Ramprashad, and G. Caire, Design and Opera-
tion of Blind Interference Alignment in Cellular and Cluster-based Systems,
in UCSD Information Theory and its Applications (ITA) Workshop 2011,
February 2011.
[157] C. Wang, H. Papadopoulos, S. Ramprashad, and G. Caire, Improved Blind
Interference Alignment in a Cellular Environment using Power Allocation and
Cell-Based Clusters, in IEEE International Conference on Communications
(ICC) 2011, June 2011.
[158] C. Wang and N. Shro, Beyond the buttery-a graph-theoretic characteri-
zation of the feasibility of network coding with two simple unicast sessions,
in IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT, pp. 121125,
IEEE, 2007.
[159] H. Weingarten, S. Shamai, and G. Kramer, On the compound MIMO broad-
cast channel, in Proceedings of Annual Information Theory and Applications
Workshop UCSD, January 2007.
[160] H. Weingarten, Y. Steinberg, and S. Shamai, The capacity region of the Gaus-
sian MIMO broadcast channel, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory,
vol. 52, pp. 39363964, September 2006.
[161] Y. Wu, S. Shamai, and S. Verdu, Degrees of Freedom of Interference Channel:
a General Formula, in Proceedings of International Symposium on Informa-
tion Theory (ISIT) 2011, 2011.
[162] C. Yetis, T. Gou, S. Jafar, and A. Kayran, On feasibility of interference align-
ment in MIMO interference networks, IEEE Transactions on Signal Process-
ing, vol. 58, no. 9, pp. 47714782, 2010.
[163] H. Yin, Comments on Degrees of freedom region for K-user interference
channel with M antennas, CoRR, vol. abs/1011.3812, [Online]. Available:
[164] H. Yu, Y. Sung, H. Kim, and Y. Lee, Adaptive beam tracking for interfer-
ence alignment for multiuser time-varying MIMO interference channels, in
Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2010 IEEE International
Conference on, pp. 30863089, IEEE, 2010.
[165] W. Yu and J. Cio, Sum capacity of Gaussian vector broadcast channels,
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 50, no. 9, pp. 18751892, Sept
2004.
134 References
[166] Y. Zhu and D. Guo, Isotropic MIMO interference channels without CSIT:
The loss of degrees of freedom, 47th Annual Allerton Conference on Com-
munication, Control, and Computing, vol. abs/0910.2961, [Online]. Available:
[167] Y. Zhu and D. Guo, The degrees of freedom of MIMO interference chan-
nels without state information at transmitters, CoRR, vol. abs/1008.5196,

Interference Alignment

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Interference Alignment

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Interference Alignment

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Foundations and Trends

. All interference aligns in the imaginary

4.6 An Asymptotic Interference Alignment Scheme [CJ08] 43

0, 1, . . . , Q 1 are coded scalar Q-ary symbols, and is a scaling coef-

. The GDoF curve is given by the

and INR scales as P. The GDoF curve for this interference

, both measured in dB scale.

You might also like