A Diversity Analysis for Distributed Interference Alignment Using the Max-SINR Algorithm

Interference alignment (IA) with symbol extensions in the quasi-static flat-fading K-user multipleinput multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel (IC) is considered in this paper. In general, long symbol extensions are required to achieve the optimal fractional degrees of freedom (DOF). However, long symbol extensions over orthogonal dimensions produce structured (diagonal or block diagonal) channel matrices from transmitters to receivers. Most of existing approaches are limited in cases where the channels have some special structures, because they align the interference without preserving the dimensionality of the desired signal explicitly. To overcome this common drawback of most existing IA algorithms, two novel iterative algorithms for IA with symbol extensions are proposed. The first algorithm designs transceivers for IA based on the mean square error (MSE) criterion which minimizes the total MSE of the system while preserving the dimensionality of the desired signal. The novel IA algorithm is a constrained optimization problem which can be solved by Lagrangian method. Its convergence is proven as well. Utilizing the reciprocity of alignment, the second algorithm is proposed based on the maximization of the multidimensional case of the generalized Rayleigh Quotient. It maximizes each receiver’s signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) while preserving the dimensionality of the desired signal. In simulation results, we show the superiority of the proposed algorithms in terms of four aspects, i.e., average sum rate, the fraction of the interfering signal power in the desired signal subspace, bit error rate (BER) and the relative power of the weakest desired data stream.

The requirement for global channel state information (CSI) throughout the network is a significant hurdle to overcome in interference alignment (IA) technologies for mobile applications. In this letter, a distributed IA algorithm is proposed that uses local CSI at the receivers to determine desirable precoding matrices for all interfering transmitters. These matrices are fed back to the transmitters where they are combined, using scalar weighting, to determine the next set of transmit precoding matrices. Results herein show that, with equivalent feedback limitations, the proposed algorithm provides better SINR performance than an IA algorithm requiring full CSI-based feedback, due to the smaller dimensions of the precoding matrices.

The sum rate maximization problem in Interference Alignment (IA) is hard to be solved, for the sum rate function is non-convex. The Weighted Minimum Mean Square Error (WMMSE) algorithm settles this problem by converting the original problem into an equivalent convex one. In this paper, an enhanced version of the WMMSE algorithm is presented, which takes the statistical information of the channel estimation error into consideration. Simulation results show that this algorithm has better performance than the original WMMSE algorithm and another distributed IA algorithm. Furthermore, the impact of time varying error caused by Doppler Shift is also investigated.

In wireless interference networks, orthogonal medium access techniques like time division multiple access (TDMA) and frequency division multiple access (FDMA) achieve merely one degree of freedom (DoF). However, by using interference alignment (IA) the achievable DoF can be linearly scaled up with the number of users. Nevertheless, this outperformance of IA heavily depends on the availability of perfect channel state information (CSI), which is not a realistic assumption in practice. Since under imperfect CSI, the performance of IA may become severely degraded, design of enhanced IA algorithms by relying on the availability of merely imperfect CSI is of particular interest. In this paper, we propose a least squares (LS)-based IA algorithm which adaptively designs the beamformers based on the knowledge of the channel estimation error variance, which is possible to be known in advance. Then, we compare the performance of the proposed scheme with interference leakage minimization algorithms. It is shown that under both perfect and imperfect CSI, the proposed LS-based IA outperforms interference leakage minimization algorithms.

This paper proposes an algorithm to compute the transmit beamformers for linear interference alignment for the MIMO interference channel and the MIMO interfering multiple-access/broadcast channel without symbol extensions. We first formulate the interference alignment problem as a rank minimization problem with linear constraints, then approximate the matrix rank by the nuclear norm. We further propose the use of an iterative reweighted nuclear norm approach and show that adaptive reweighting can significantly improve the algorithm's ability to find aligned beamformers. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is able to provide more interference-free dimensions and also converges faster than a previously proposed rank-constrained rank-minimization approach for interference alignment.

Interference alignment(IA) with symbol extensions in the K-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel(IC) is considered in this paper. Symbol extensions produce the channels of special structure. Most of existing approaches are limited in cases where the channels have some special structure, because they align the interference without preserving the dimensionality of the desired signal. For that reason, two novel iterative algorithms for IA with symbol extensions are proposed. The first algorithm designs transceivers for IA based on minimizing the maximum per-user mean square error(MSE) while preserving the dimensionality of the desired signal. Utilizing channel reciprocity, the second algorithm is proposed which is the constrained optimization problem. It maximizes each receiver's SINR while preserving the dimensionality of the desired signal. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithms not only achieve good performance in terms of BER performance but also achieve good performance on maximizing sum rate of the system.

Interference alignment (IA) is a multi-user wireless communication strategy that enables several transmitters simultaneous communicate with their paired receivers without interfering each other. IA is a multiplexing gain optimal strategy at the expense of requiring the global channel state information (CSI) at the transmitters. Most previous works assume the availability of perfect CSI which is not possible in practice. The performance of IA algorithms based on perfect CSI drop dramatically in circumstance where CSI errors exist. In this paper we propose a robust minimum mean square error (MMSE) IA algorithm with imperfect CSI. Based on a Gaussian statistic channel error model, we give the mean square error objective function with per transmitter power constraint. The objective function is not joint convex in precoders and decoders, but convex in precoders with fixed decoders and vice versa. We convert the problem to two convex sub problems and iteratively find the solutions. Numerical results are presented to validate the effectiveness of proposed algorithm when CSI errors exist.

The achievable degrees of freedom (DOF) in an interference relay channel are examined. We highlight some differences between two relaying strategies in two different setups. Namely, we study the DOF achieved using interference alignment and interference cancellation in a cognitive relay setup and in a half-duplex relay setup. The difference between the two setups is causality, which leads to a difference in the achievable DOF. We show that 3/2 DOF are achievable almost surely in a 3-user complex Gaussian interference relay channel with quasistatic channel coefficients and with one antenna at each node. This result holds for both the cognitive as well as for the more practical half-duplex non-cognitive relay. However, while this is achieved in the cognitive relay setup using one symbol duration, it needs two symbol extensions in the half-duplex case. On the other hand, we show that in the cognitive case, interference cancellation performs better than interference alignment, since it achieves 2 DOF almost surely. Moreover, interference cancellation achieves full, i.e. K DOF for a family of K-user interference channels with a cognitive relay. Interestingly, for the half-duplex setup the outcome is swapped. Here, interference alignment outperforms interference cancellation, since the latter achieves less than 3/2 DOF almost surely in the 3 user case.

The explosive demand for high data rates and the need ubiquitous wireless connectivity has led to the phenomenon of network densification, the deployment of large number of base station within a geographic area. Since the radio spectrum is limited, wireless transmissions need to share a common resource which results in interference. Interference in turn creates a bottleneck on the communication rate. Recently three breakthroughs have been made to increase the capacity of wireless networks while mitigating interference : multiple input multiple output (MIMO) beamforming, interference alignment (IA) and pattern reconfigurable antennas (PRA). While a great deal of progress has been made on understanding each individually, relatively little is known about how to use these techniques in combination to increase system performance. In this dissertation, we analyze and experimentally evaluate how these new technologies can be leveraged to enhance the rate performance of communication networks. Specifically, we address three problems: i) enhancing multi-user MIMO performance with PRA, ii) improving IA performance with PRA-based antenna selection, and iii) enabling practical blind IA with PRA. To understand the impact PRAs on MU-MIMO and IA, it is necessary to evaluate their performance through measurements. Simulation-based studies often reiterate over set of simplistic channel models and unrealistic assumptions. This dissertation focuses on a measurement-based evaluation approach. For each of these problems, a hardware testbed implementation and measurement methodology is developed for evaluating the performance of the aforementioned technologies through efficient and repeatable experiments. The first two major contributions of this dissertation focus on multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) and IA. While the theoretical rate gains of MU-MIMO and IA are substantial, the performance gains in practical systems and measured channels have been limited. One of the key limiting factors are spatially correlated user channels. In this work, we propose MU-MIMO and IA transmission schemes that leverage the pattern diversity provided by PRAs to mitigate the effects of spatial correlation in wireless channels. PRAs are capable of dynamically adjusting their radiation pattern, providing an additional degree of freedom that can be exploited to improve MU-MIMO and IA performance by treating the array configuration and radiation characteristics as additional components in the joint optimization of adaptive system parameters. We quantify the benefits of pattern diversity on the rate performance of MU-MIMO and IA systems through extensive measurements. Furthermore, we develop efficient antenna mode selection algorithms to realize those benefits without increasing the system complexity or overhead, making these techniques suitable for practical implementation. The third contribution of this dissertation focuses on a transmission technique known as blind IA. In contrast to MU-MIMO and conventional IA, blind IA is signaling scheme that suppresses interference in multi-user systems, without the knowledge of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The key to performing IA without CSIT is the use of PRAs that are capable of dynamically switching among a fixed number of radiation patterns to introduce artificial fluctuations in the channel. In this dissertation, we develop a novel implementation of a blind IA system on a software defined radio platform where each of the receivers is equipped with a PRA. Our work provides the first experimental evaluation of PRA-based blind IA schemes and demonstrates significant gains in rate and reliability over traditional orthogonal transmission schemes such as TDMA.

In this letter, we consider a new interference alignment (IA) strategy for single-input single-output interference broadcast channels with constant channel coefficients. First, we show that 1.5 degrees of freedom (DOF) is achievable for 3-cell case by utilizing asymmetric complex signaling (AC) and multiuser diversity without symbol extension. It is also investigated that the achievable DOF varies with the user scaling condition and ω(√(SNR)) is required for guaranteeing the DOF of 1.5. To improve the sum-rate performance, user scheduling algorithms combined with the beamforming techniques are suggested which outperform the conventional IA schemes. After introducing an exhaustive scheduling algorithm which shows optimal sum-rate, a simplified scheduling method is also proposed which reduces both scheduling metric computations and the search size.

Interference alignment (IA) is an effective method that can eliminate interferences in wireless networks, and has been applied to spectrum sharing in cognitive radio (CR) networks recently. However, the availability of perfect network channel state information (CSI) is necessary for most existing IA schemes, which is not practical in general due to the realistic communication scenarios and deployment challenges. In this paper, we apply IA to cognitive relay networks under CSI mismatch where the variance of the CSI measurement error depends on signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). An adaptive Max-SINR IA algorithm has been introduced to improve the performance of the secondary network by using the knowledge of CSI error variance. Finally, we analyze the performance of the secondary network in terms of the end-to-end equivalent transmission rate and outage probability. Simulation results indicate that our proposed adaptive Max-SINR IA scheme can greatly improve the performance of the secondary network.

Interference alignment (IA) is a novel technique to manage interference for multiuser wireless communications. The basic idea of IA in managing interference is based on the subspace separation. Since this property can be easily damaged, one might image that IA is sensitive to errors appeared in channel state information (CSI), which is needed at the transmitter side of each user. In this work, we will show some comparison results between IA and direct transmission (DT). In the DT scheme, the maximum likelihood (ML) receiver is used at each user. The simulation results show that IA systems are indeed very sensitive to CSI errors compared with the DT-ML system, while the complexity of the IA systems in implementation is comparable with the DT-ML systems if the constellation of transmitted symbols is of moderate cardinality.

In this paper, the problem of Downlink Multi-User MIMO (DL MU-MIMO) transmission from two interfering transmitters, each equipped with M antennas to multiple users each equipped with K antennas is considered. It is assumed that all users receive a single data stream of rank one from only one of the transmitters. A novel transmission/reception scheme is proposed based on the idea of Interference Alignment (IA), which aligns the interference coming from each transmitter to the users in the other cell along a single predetermined vector v <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ref</sub> , and hence, leaves more degrees of freedom for signal transmission from each transmitter. Furthermore, unlike other IA-based schemes in the literature, only local Channel State Information (CSI) is required at nodes. It is shown that for the case of K ≥ M, the total degrees of freedom of 2M - 2 is achievable. The proposed scheme is also extended to the case of K <; M based on the ideas of Euclidean distance minimization and time/frequency extension. Finally, simulation results are provided to compare the performance of the proposed scheme with that of the existing results in the literature.

A novel interference alignment (IA) scheme based on the errors-in-variables (EIV) mathematic model has been proposed to overcome the channel state information (CSI) estimation error for the MIMO interference channels. By solving an equivalently unconstrained optimization problem, the proposed IA scheme employing a weighted total least squares (WTLS) algorithm can obtain the solution to a constrained optimization problem for transmit precoding (TPC) matrices and minimizes the distortion caused by imperfect CSI according to the EIV model. It is shown that the design of TPC matrices can be realized through an efficient iterative algorithm. The convergence of the proposed scheme is presented as well. Simulation results show that the proposed IA scheme is robust over MIMO interference channels with imperfect CSI, which yields significantly better sum rate performance than the existing IA schemes such as distributed iterative IA, maximum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (Max SINR), and minimum mean square error (MMSE) schemes.

With the rapid growth of network users, how to increase the system capacity has become an urgent problem for the current communication system in the case of limited spectrum resources. The introduction of multi-user systems has increased system capacity, but it has also led to inter-user interference, which has further affected system capacity. To solve the multi-user interference problem, interference alignment is introduced. Interference Alignment (IA) is an interference cancellation technique that effectively eliminates the effects of interfering signals by compressing the interfering signal into a space independent of the desired signal and then forcing the interfering signal to zero at the receiving end. However, in practical applications, interference-aligned transceivers require a joint design, which is often difficult to achieve. The traditional approach is to mathematically expect it, but it also leads to some degree of irrationality in the transceiver design. In this paper, based on the traditional least square interference alignment (LS-IA) algorithm, a symbol-detection-assisted least square interference alignment (SDA-LS-IA) algorithm is proposed for its shortcomings in transceiver algorithm design. Firstly, based on the precoding matrix and the zero-forcing matrix of the transceiver designed by the traditional LS-IA, the symbol detection is performed, and then the transceiver is designed again according to the detection symbol, and then the symbol detection is performed. The computer simulation proves that the proposed algorithm has better anti-interference performance than the traditional LS-IA.