Improved blind interference alignment in a cellular environment using power allocation and cell-based clusters

Abstract

Fundamentally, benefits of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) in wireless systems rest on increasing the number of Degrees of Freedom (DoFs) that can be exploited for transmission. DoFs can be used to increase spectral efficiency and/or provide increased diversity. However, exploiting DoFs in MIMO often requires knowledge of Channel State Information (CSI) at the transmitter and/or receiver. Obtaining CSI creates overheads due to the required use of wireless resources for CSI-estimation pilots and/or CSI feedback. This can create a fundamental "dimensionality bottleneck" that limits the growth in spectral efficiency for some conventional MIMO systems. Recently a new class of techniques known as "Blind Interference Alignment" (BIA) has demonstrated the possibility to grow DoFs without many of the CSI overheads of conventional systems. BIA therefore has the potential to relieve the "dimensionality bottleneck". However, BIA can have limited applicability to many users in a cellular environment given that it requires a high Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) to operate efficiently. By examining BIA, we present a method to reduce the SNR requirements and improve the application of BIA through power allocation and cluster-based transmission. We show that BIA can be applied successfully in cellular without the need for joint processing between base-stations, and can improve performance over conventional MIMO for even cell-edge users in some scenarios. © 2011 IEEE.