Distributed Interference Management: A Broadcast Approach

Effective interference management in the multiuser interference channel strongly hinges on the channel state information’s availability at the transmitters (CSIT). In a broad range of emerging large-scale and distributed networks (e.g., the Internet of Things), acquiring the CSIT is prohibitive due to the extensive information exchange that it imposes. As a result, the interference management approaches that rely on the CSIT lose their effectiveness in such circumstances. This article focuses on the two-user interference channel and proposes a broadcast approach to interference management. Its hallmark is that the transmitters, unlike the receivers, are entirely oblivious to instantaneous channel states. Each transmitter splits its message into multiple superimposed encoded information layers, where each layer is adapted to a given possible state for the combined states of all channels. Depending on the relative gain between the direct and interfering channels, each receiver opportunistically decodes a subset of both transmitters’ received layers. An average achievable rate region is delineated, serving as an inner bound on the Gaussian interference channel’s average capacity region in the absence of CSIT. Finally, an upper bound on the gap between the achievable sum-rate and the sum-rate capacity is established.