Rate Region Frontiers for n-user Interference Channel with Interference as Noise

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the achievable rate region frontiers for the n-user interference channel with no cooperation, treating interference as noise, and analyzes their convexity properties especially for the two-user case.

Contribution

It derives the union of hyper-surface frontiers for the n-user interference channel and analyzes the convexity of the two-user frontiers, providing insights into when time sharing is beneficial.

Findings

Rate region frontier is the union of n hyper-surface frontiers.

Convexity or concavity depends on channel conditions.

Time sharing improves rates in certain symmetric two-user channels.

Abstract

This paper presents the achievable rate region frontiers for the n-user interference channel when there is no cooperation at the transmit nor at the receive side. The receiver is assumed to treat the interference as additive thermal noise and does not employ multiuser detection. In this case, the rate region frontier for the n-user interference channel is found to be the union of n hyper-surface frontiers of dimension n-1, where each is characterized by having one of the transmitters transmitting at full power. The paper also finds the conditions determining the convexity or concavity of the frontiers for the case of two-user interference channel, and discusses when a time sharing approach should be employed with specific results pertaining to the two-user symmetric channel.