On the Blind Interference Alignment over Homogeneous Block Fading Channels

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that blind interference alignment (BIA) can be achieved in homogeneous block fading channels by exploiting staggered fading patterns, enabling optimal degrees of freedom in multi-user broadcast channels.

Contribution

It shows that BIA is possible in homogeneous block fading settings and proposes a scheme to achieve 4/3 DoF, extending BIA applicability beyond heterogeneous fading scenarios.

Findings

BIA can be applied in homogeneous block fading channels with staggered patterns.

The proposed scheme achieves the optimal 4/3 DoF in 2-user 2x1 BC channels.

In multi-user settings, BIA is feasible when the number of users exceeds four.

Abstract

Staggered fading pattern between different users is crucial to interference alignment without CSIT, or so-called blind interference alignment (BIA). This special fading structure naturally arises from heterogeneous block fading setting, in which different users experience independent block fading with different coherent times. Jafar et al. prove that BIA can be applied in some special heterogeneous block fading channels, which are formed naturally or constructed artificially. In this paper, we show that in the context of a 2-user 2x1 broadcasting (BC) channel, staggered fading pattern can also be found in homogeneous block fading setting, in which both users experience independent fading with the same coherent time; and we propose a scheme to achieve the optimal 4/3 DoF for the homogenous setting by using BIA. Applying the proposed scheme, we further study a 2x1 BC network with K users undergoing homogeneous block fading. When K>=4, we show it is almost guaranteed that the transmitter can find two users among the K users to form a 2-user 2x1 BC channel which can apply BIA.