Interference alignment and neutralization in a cognitive 3-user MAC-interference channel: degrees of freedom

A network consisting of a point-to-point (P2P) link and a multiple access channel (MAC) sharing the same medium is considered. The resulting interference network, with three transmitters and two receivers is studied from degrees of freedom (DoF) perspective, with and without cognition. Several cognition variants are examined. Namely, the setup is studied with (1) no cognitive transmitters, (2) a cognitive P2P transmitter, (3) one cognitive MAC transmitter, and (4) with two cognitive MAC transmitters. It is shown that having a cognitive P2P transmitter does not bring any DoF gain to the network. This is obtained by showing that the DoF of the two former cases (1) and (2) is 1. However, it is shown that a cognitive MAC transmitter is more beneficial since the latter two cases (3) and (4) have 3/2 DoF. The achievability of 3/2 DoF is guaranteed by using a combination of interference neutralization and interference alignment.