Interference Alignment with Partially Coordinated Transmit Precoding

In this paper, we introduce an efficient interference alignment (IA) algorithm exploiting partially coordinated transmit precoding to improve the number of concurrent interference-free transmissions, i.e., the multiplexing gain, in multicell downlink. The proposed coordination model is such that each base-station simultaneously transmits to two users and each user is served by two base-stations. First, we show in a K-user system operating at the information theoretic upper bound of degrees of freedom (DOF), the generic IA is proper when K ≤ 3, whereas the proposed partially coordinated IA is proper when K ≤ 5. Then, we derive a non-iterative, i.e., one shot, IA algorithm for the proposed scheme when K ≤ 5. We show that for a given latency, the backhaul data rate requirement of the proposed method grows linearly with K. Monte-Carlo simulation results show that the proposed one-shot algorithm offers higher system throughput than the iterative IA at practical SNR levels.