Degrees of Freedom of a K-User Interference Channel in the Presence of an Instantaneous Relay

In this paper, we study the degrees of freedom (DoF) of a frequency-selective K-user interference channel in the presence of an instantaneous relay (IR) with multiple receiving and transmitting antennas. We investigate two scenarios based on the IR antennas’ cooperation ability. First, we assume that the IR receiving and transmitting antennas can coordinate with each other and that the transmitted signal of each transmitting antenna can depend on the received signals of all receiving antennas, and we derive lower and upper bounds for the sum DoF of this model. In an interference alignment scheme, we divide receivers into two groups called clean and dirty receivers. We design our scheme such that a part of the messages of clean receivers can be de-multiplexed at the IR. Thus, the IR can use these message streams for an interference cancellation at the clean receivers. Next, we consider an IR, the antennas of which do not have coordination with each other and where the transmitted signal of each transmitting antenna depends only on the received signal of its corresponding receiving antenna. We also derive lower and upper bounds for the sum DoF for this model of IR. We show that the achievable sum DoF decreases considerably compared with the coordinated case. In both of these models, our schemes achieve the maximum K sum DoF if the number of transmitting and receiving antennas is more than a finite threshold.