Interference Channel with Intermittent Feedback

TL;DR

This paper fully characterizes the capacity region of a two-user linear deterministic interference channel with intermittent feedback, showing how feedback availability influences capacity and proposing a novel encoding scheme.

Contribution

It introduces a complete capacity characterization for the interference channel with intermittent feedback, using a new scheme and genie-aided bounds.

Findings

Capacity depends only on forward channel parameters and feedback probabilities.

Achieves perfect-feedback capacity when feedback links are sufficiently active.

Proposes a novel encoding and decoding scheme for interference management.

Abstract

We investigate how to exploit intermittent feedback for interference management. Focusing on the two-user linear deterministic interference channel, we completely characterize the capacity region. We find that the characterization only depends on the forward channel parameters and the marginal probability distribution of each feedback link. The scheme we propose makes use of block Markov encoding and quantize-map-and-forward at the transmitters, and backward decoding at the receivers. Matching outer bounds are derived based on novel genie-aided techniques. As a consequence, the perfect-feedback capacity can be achieved once the two feedback links are active with large enough probabilities.