Performance analysis of distributed cooperation under uncoordinated network interference

Managing interference is a major technical challenge in large wireless networks. Distributed cooperation techniques, such as Interference Alignment (IA), exploit the available spatial degrees of freedom of the interference channel holding promise of enhanced spectral efficiency. Most prior results, however, consider isolated network settings, neglecting the interference from nodes that are not participating in the cooperation scheme. This paper analyzes the performance of IA in the presence of uncoordinated interference from a heterogeneous network. Specifically, we analyze perfect downlink IA in a fixed-size cell, where the interfering nodes are distributed according to a spatial point process, and compare it with a non-cooperative MIMO scheme. Furthermore, the performance gains by using a guard zone between the IA cluster and the interference field are evaluated and design guidelines for the necessary isolation distance from out-of-cluster interferers are provided.