On the Optimality of Treating Interference as Noise for Interfering Multiple Access Channels

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of treating interference as noise in a complex network of multiple interfering multiple access channels, providing conditions under which this simple approach is optimal.

Contribution

It characterizes the GDoF region for TIN in interfering MACs and identifies parameter regimes where TIN is optimal.

Findings

TIN achieves the optimal GDoF region in certain regimes.

The paper defines a power-controlled TIN scheme for interfering MACs.

Conditions for TIN optimality are explicitly characterized.

Abstract

In this paper, we look at the problem of treating interference as noise (TIN) in the Gaussian interfering multiple access channel (IMAC). The considered network comprises $K$ mutually interfering multiple access channels (MACs), each consisting of two transmitters communicating independent messages to one receiver. We define the TIN scheme for this channel as one in which each MAC performs a power controlled version of its capacity-achieving strategy while treating interference from all other MACs as noise. We characterize an achievable generalized degrees-of-freedom (GDoF) region under the TIN scheme and identify a regime of parameters (in terms of channel strength levels) where this region is optimal.