On the Overhead of Interference Alignment: Training, Feedback, and Cooperation

Interference alignment (IA) is a cooperative transmission strategy that, under some conditions, achieves the interference channel's maximum number of degrees of freedom. Realizing IA gains, however, is contingent upon providing transmitters with sufficiently accurate channel knowledge. In this paper, we study the performance of IA in multiple-input multiple-output systems where channel knowledge is acquired through training and analog feedback. We design the training and feedback system to maximize IA's effective sum-rate: a non-asymptotic performance metric that accounts for estimation error, training and feedback overhead, and channel selectivity. We characterize effective sum-rate with overhead in relation to various parameters such as signal-to-noise ratio, Doppler spread, and feedback channel quality. A main insight from our analysis is that, by properly designing the CSI acquisition process, IA can provide good sum-rate performance in a very wide range of fading scenarios. Another observation from our work is that such overhead-aware analysis can help solve a number of practical network design problems. To demonstrate the concept of overhead-aware network design, we consider the example problem of finding the optimal number of cooperative IA users based on signal power and mobility.