Interference Alignment and Degrees of Freedom of the $K$-User Interference Channel

Abstract

For the fully connected K user wireless interference channel where the channel coefficients are time-varying and are drawn from a continuous distribution, the sum capacity is characterized as C(SNR)=K/2log(SNR)+o(log(SNR)) . Thus, the K user time-varying interference channel almost surely has K/2 degrees of freedom. Achievability is based on the idea of interference alignment. Examples are also provided of fully connected K user interference channels with constant (not time-varying) coefficients where the capacity is exactly achieved by interference alignment at all SNR values.