Trade-off between Communication and Cooperation in the Interference Channel

Abstract: We consider the problem of coding over the multi-user Interference Channel (IC). It is well-known that aligning the interfering signals results in improved achievable rates in certain setups involving more than two users. We argue that in the general interference problem, senders face a tradeoff between communicating their message to their corresponding decoder or cooperating with other users by aligning their signals. Traditionally, interference alignment is carried out using structured codes such as linear codes and group codes. We show through an example that the usual structured coding schemes used for interference neutralization lack the necessary flexibility to optimize this tradeoff. Based on this intuition, we propose a new class of codes for this problem. We use the example to show that the application of these codes gives strict improvements in terms of achievable rates. Finally, we derive a new achievable region for the three user IC which strictly improves upon the previously known inner bounds for this problem.