An Overview of Interference Alignment - 02/25/2011

Bobak Nazer

Title: An Overview of Interference Alignment

Abstract: Consider K transmitters that wish to send data to a single receiver over a shared wireless channel. Clearly, these transmitters will interfere with one another and, to a first approximation, each user can attain at most 1/K the rate available in the interference-free case. Similarly, consider a single transmitter that wishes to send independent data to K receivers. Again, to a first approximation, the data rate to each user is at most 1/K. Now, consider a network with K transmitters and K receivers where each transmitter wishes to communicate with a unique receiver. Our intuition from the previous two cases suggests that the data rate can be at most 1/K. Surprisingly, through a technique known as interference alignment, the data rate can be pushed as high as 1/2 the interference-free rate. In this talk, I will highlight some of the core ideas behind interference alignment and discuss applications to wireless networks and distributed storage in data centers.

-- JiaxiJin - 10 Mar 2011