Analysis of encoding and decoding techniques for the interference channel with destination cooperation

In this paper, we analyze and compare several encoding and decoding techniques for the interference channel with destination cooperation (IC-DC). For the encoding techniques, we consider standard Han-Kobayashi (HK) techniques at both sources as well as quantize-forward (QF) and compress-forward (CF) relaying at the destinations. For the decoding techniques, we compare backward and sliding window decoding at both destinations. We prove that the achievable rate regions obtained with QF and CF relaying are the same as long as the same decoding technique is used by the destinations. We also show that with backward decoding, QF and CF relaying techniques achieve the same rate region as that obtained by the HK with noisy network coding (NNC) scheme. Therefore, QF relaying is the preferred scheme because it is simpler than both CF relaying and NNC and still leads to the same rate region. Furthermore, we provide numerical results for the Gaussian channel. These results show that destination cooperation is more efficient in strong IC than in weak IC. Also, if the destinations have enough powers or the inter-destination links are very strong, sliding window decoding achieves almost the same rate region as backward decoding while having a much shorter decoding delay.