On the Achievable DoF and User Scaling Law of Opportunistic Interference Alignment in 3-Transmitter MIMO Interference Channels

Abstract: In this paper, we propose opportunistic interference alignment (OIA) schemes for three-transmitter multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channels (ICs). In the proposed OIA, each transmitter has its own user group and selects a single user who has the most aligned interference signals. The user dimensions provided by multiple users are exploited to align interfering signals. Contrary to conventional IA, perfect channel state information of all channel links is not required at the transmitter, and each user just feeds back one scalar value to indicate how well the interfering channels are aligned. We prove that each transmitter can achieve the same degrees of freedom (DoF) as the interference free case via user selection in our system model that the number of receive antennas is twice of the number of transmit antennas. Using the geometric interpretation, we find the required user scaling to obtain an arbitrary non-zero DoF. Two OIA schemes are proposed and compared with various user selection schemes in terms of achievable rate/DoF and complexity.