Interference as Noise: Friend or Foe?

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that treating interference as noise with non-Gaussian mixed inputs achieves near-optimal capacity in two-user Gaussian interference channels across all regimes, challenging the traditional view of interference as solely a foe.

Contribution

It introduces the use of mixed discrete-Gaussian inputs for interference channels, showing their effectiveness in achieving near-capacity without joint decoding or time sharing.

Findings

TINnoTS achieves capacity region within a constant or logarithmic gap.

Mixed inputs with discrete components act as effective common messages.

TINnoTS is gDoG optimal across all interference regimes.

Abstract

This paper shows that for the two-user Gaussian Interference Channel (G-IC) Treating Interference as Noise without Time Sharing (TINnoTS) achieves the closure of the capacity region to within either a constant gap, or to within a gap of the order O(logln(min(S,I))) where S is the largest Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) on the direct links and I is the largest Interference to Noise Ratio (INR) on the cross links. As a consequence, TINnoTS is optimal from a generalized Degrees of Freedom (gDoF) perspective for all channel gains except for a subset of zero measure. TINnoTS with Gaussian inputs is known to be optimal to within 1/2 bit for a subset of the weak interference regime. Surprisingly, this paper shows that TINnoTS is gDoG optimal in all parameter regimes, even in the strong and very strong interference regimes where joint decoding of Gaussian inputs is optimal. For approximate optimality of TINnoTS in all parameter regimes it is critical to use non-Gaussian inputs. This work thus proposes to use mixed inputs as channel inputs where a mixed input is the sum of a discrete and a Gaussian random variable. Interestingly, compared to the Han-Kobayashi inner bound, the discrete part of a mixed input is shown to effectively act as a common message in the sense that, although treated as noise, its effect on the achievable rate region is as if it were jointly decoded together with the desired messages at a non-intended receiver. The practical implication is that a discrete interfering input is a 'friend', while a Gaussian interfering input is in general a 'foe'. Since TINnoTS requires neither joint decoding nor time sharing, the results of this paper are applicable to a variety of oblivions or asynchronous channels, such as the block asynchronous G-IC (which is not an information stable) and the G-IC with partial codebook knowledge at one or more receivers.