Feedback Capacity of the Gaussian Interference Channel to Within 1.7075 Bits: the Symmetric Case

We characterize the symmetric capacity to within 1.7075 bits/s/Hz for the two-user Gaussian interference channel with feedback. The result makes use of a deterministic model to provide insights into the Gaussian channel. We derive a new outer bound to show that a proposed achievable scheme can achieve the symmetric capacity to within 1.7075 bits for all channel parameters. From this result, we show that feedback provides unbounded gain, i.e., the gain becomes arbitrarily large for certain channel parameters. It is a surprising result because feedback has been so far known to provide only power gain (bounded gain) in the context of multiple access channels and broadcast channels. Index Terms Feedback Capacity, The Gaussian Interference Channel, A Deterministic Model January 23, 2009 DRAFT