Communications, caching, and computing oriented small cell networks with interference alignment

In future generation mobile systems, hyperdense small cell networks will be deployed to meet the tremendous growth of mobile traffic, in which interference is a key limitation. Interference alignment, IA, is a potential technique for interference management of small cell networks. However, there are still some practical challenges that hinder the development of IA-based small cell networks. On the other hand, to better cope with the shift from the sender-driven end-to-end communication paradigm to the receiver-driven content retrieval paradigm, content-centric communication has attracted great attention. Together with recent advances in computing, a communications, caching, and computing - 3C - oriented design paradigm for mobile networks is emerging. In this article, we propose a framework of 3C-oriented small cell networks with IA, in which caching and computing are exploited to simplify the network topology, improve the throughput, reduce the backhaul load, and guarantee the quality of experience of users. Furthermore, some research challenges are discussed for 3C-oriented small cell networks with IA.