IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 60, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2012

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Kluwer Academic, 2001.

6097

Linear Degrees-of-Freedom for the

MIMO
Interference Channels With Constant Channel Coefficients
Sungkyu Jung and Jungwoo Lee

AbstractThis paper analyzes the linear degrees of freedom (LDoF) for

-user
MIMO interference channels with constant channel coefficients. In this correspondence, we interpret the interference alignment
problem as a multivariate polynomial system in terms of properness. The
properness provides a LDoF upperbound for interference alignment. With
this approach, we propose a method to obtain the upperbound for total
LDoF achievable by linear interference alignment. The LDoF upperbound
for properness condition results have two different cases which depend on
the number of users, the number of transmit antennas, and the number
of receive antennas. A key contribution of this paper is that it provides a
MIMO interference channels
closed-form LDoF upperbound for
where the LDoF of each user may be different.
Index TermsDegrees-of-freedom, interference channel, MIMO.

I. INTRODUCTION
In wireless networks, interference has been regarded as a critical
problem which limits the network throughput. Recent studies of interference alignment for wireless interference networks have shown
that the capacity of wireless networks is not limited by the interference from other users [1]. It was shown that through an interference
-user inalignment scheme, the optimal DoF K
2 is achieved in the
terference channel with time-varying channel coefficients. The idea of
interference alignment is to align undesirable (interference) signals observed by each receiver over one half of the signal space. This means
that every user in the networks is able to obtain one half of the interference-free space, and achieves 1/2 DoF so that the total DoF become K
2 . Interference alignment methods have been widely studied,
and developed for various wireless networks such as X channels [2],
[3] and multiple input multiple output (MIMO) interference channels
[4]. Beamforming design methods for efficient interference alignment
are also studied [5][7].
The DoF for the general interference channel with constant channel
coefficients (limited channel dimensions) remains an open problem for
more than two users. Only a few scenarios have been analyzed. In [1],
it is shown that the total DoF is 3M
2 in the three-user MIMO Gaussian
antennas at each node. In [4], the auinterference channel with
thors consider the + 2 user MIMO interference channel with
antennas at each transmitter and
(  2) antennas at each reRM
+ R +2
ceiver. They show that for this channel, the DoF of
R01

RM R

RM

Manuscript received October 22, 2011; revised March 05, 2012 and June
26, 2012; accepted July 22, 2012. Date of publication August 03, 2012; date
of current version October 09, 2012. The associate editor coordinating the
review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Prof. Wolfgang
Utschick. This research was supported in part by Basic Science Research
Program (2010-0013397) and Mid-career Researcher Program (2010-0027155)
through the NRF funded by the MEST, Seoul R&BD Program (JP091007,
0423-20090051), the KETEP grant (2011T100100151), the INMAC, and
BK21.
S. Jung was with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Korea. He is now with Samsung Electronics, Suwon 443-742, Korea (e-mail: csungq@wspl.snu.ac.kr).
J. Lee is with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences,
Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Korea (e-mail: junglee@snu.ac.kr).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSP.2012.2211590

1053-587X/$31.00 2012 IEEE

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 60, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2012

can be achieved without symbol extension. Although the general analysis of achievable DoF remains open, numerical approaches are proposed [8], [9]. In [8], a distributed algorithm has been proposed that
requires only local channel knowledge at each node. Each receiver is
assumed to know only the channel to its desired transmitter, and the
iterative algorithms using the reciprocity of wireless networks are proposed. In [9], the iterative interference alignment algorithm via alternating minimization is proposed. Numerical results in [8], [9] provide
important insights into the feasibility of interference alignment over a
limited number of signal dimensions. Further in [10], the feasibility
conditions for interference alignment over constant MIMO channels
are formally analyzed. They view the interference alignment problem
as a polynomial system which has multiple equations and variables. A
system is called proper if the number of variables is larger than or equal
to the number of equations. A key insight is that an improper system
is infeasible, which means that a proper system may not be feasible.
However, it was shown that proper systems may still not be feasible,
and the examples can be shown in [10].
The rational dimension framework provides a mechanism to translate the asymptotic interference alignment solutions designed for time
varying channels directly to constant coefficient channels [11], [12].
Instead of linear precoding through beamforming vectors, lattice codes
scaled by a set of rationally independent scalars are used for signaling.
Within the new framework of rational dimensions, the asymptotic
alignment of [1], [4] is achieved and the DoF characterization for the
-user (MIMO) interference channel is obtained for almost all values
of channel coefficients. In [12], it is shown that the DoF MMN
+N can
2 MIMO interference channel with
be achieved for the -user
real and constant channel coefficients. It is also shown that the total
M +N
DoF is bounded above by MMN
+N if  gcd(M;N ) for the -user
2 MIMO interference channel with real and constant channel
coefficients.
In signal space domain, the conjecture of [10] between proper/improper systems and feasibility/infeasibility of linear interference alignment is settled completely in one direction, and partially in the other
by Bresler et al. [13] and Razaviyayn et al. [14]. They have shown independently that improper systems are indeed infeasible. In the other
direction, it is shown that if all the users have the same DoF , and the
number of transmit antennas k and the number of receive antennas
k are divisible by , then the properness implies the feasibility of
interference alignment for generic choice of channel coefficients. If in
and k = for all and
are divisible by ,
addition, k =
then the feasibility condition is precisely given by +  ( +1).
Further, for the symmetric square case where all transmitters and receivers have antennas and each user has the same DoF , it is shown
that the feasibility condition is precisely given by N d(2K +1) . More recently, in [15][17], a DoF region of 3-user MIMO interference channel
with constant channel coefficients is analyzed independently both in
terms of linear feasibility and from an information theoretic perspective.
In this paper, we present a method to compute the upper bound of
total DoF achievable by linear interference alignment, and the DoF al2 MIMO interference channels
location for each user in -user
with constant channel coefficients in terms of the signal space domain.
We define the DoF achievable by linear interference alignment as linear
DoF (LDoF). Our methodology is similar to the results of [10] in that
the properness of a system is considered. In [10], however, properness
condition only for the symmetric system can be considered. For asymmetric systems, it is very computationally complicated to determine
whether the system is proper or not. In this paper, properness conditions
for 2 MIMO interference channels where the LDoF of each user
may be different are analyzed, and a closed-form LDoF upperbound
through properness conditions is considered. In summary, it will be

M N
K
K

M N

M N

M N

M; N
d
M N dK
d

shown that the total LDoF achievable by the interference alignment

is bounded above as follows. The total LDoF upperbound is M
K++1N

K MK++1N 0 1

when M
is an integer, and it is
K++1N is
not an integer. It should be noted that the achievability proof is not presented here, which is still an open problem. We derived several properties of the proper systems and the LDoF allocation method. By using
these results, we propose the method to compute the properness-based
2 MIMO interference channel with conLDoF for the -user
stant channel coefficients.
Notation: Throughout this manuscript, we use the lower case with
bold fonts for vectors, and the upper case with bold fonts for matrices.
y and y are the conjugate transposes of a matrix and a vector
. The norm of column vector is denoted by k k2 , and the expectation operator is written as [1]. j j represents the cardinality of the
set . b1c and d1e denote the floor and the ceiling functions which map
a real number to the previous largest integer or the next smallest inusers, i.e.
teger, respectively. Finally, K denotes the index set of
K = f1 2 1 1 1 g.
when M
K++1N

A
a

M N

; ; ;K

II. SYSTEM MODEL

K
k
M
k K
yk = Hklxl + nk ; 8k 2 K:

We consider the -user MIMO interference network where the th

transmitter and the th receiver are equipped with k and k antennas, respectively. We assume a constant coefficient channel, and the
received signal of th receiver is given by

(1)

l=1

yk is the Nk 2 1 received signal vector, and nk is the zero mean unit

variance circularly symmetric additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN)
vector. xl is the Ml 2 1 signal vector transmitted from the lth transmitter, and Hkl is the Nk 2 Ml matrix of channel coefficients between
the lth transmitter and the k th receiver. Each element of the channel

matrix is a complex random variable drawn from a continuous distribution without any deterministic relationship between the channel coefficients. The transmit power at transmitter is [k l k2 ] = l .
The number of independent streams transmitted by the th user is
denoted by k  min( k k ), which is the DoF for the th user. Let
Kk=1 ( k 2 k k ) =( 1 2 1 1 )1 1 1 ( K 2 K K ) denote
the -user MIMO interference network, where the th transmitter and
the th receiver have k and k antennas, respectively, and the th
users DoF is k . In [10], the -user MIMO interference network is
called symmetric if k =
, k =
and k = for all , i.e.
( 2 )K , and is called asymmetric otherwise.

l E x

K
k

N ;d
d

M N; d

k
k
N ;d

M ;N
M N ;d
M
k
M N
K
M M N N d d

III. INTERFERENCE ALIGNMENT AND FEASIBILITY CONDITION

Interference alignment is achieved by two processes: precoding at
the transmitter, and zeroforcing at the receiver. At the transmitter, the
k 2 k precoding matrix k are designed to align the undesired
signal into an interference subspace at each receiver while the desired
signal subspace at each receiver are linearly independent of the interference subspace. Each receiver, therefore, can remove the interference
subspace with the k 2 k zeroforcing matrix k , and extract the
desired signal. For successful interference alignment solution, the following conditions have to be satisfied.
(2)
ky kj j = 0 8 6=

UH V ; j k
rank Uky Hkk Vk = dk : 8k 2 K
(3)
The DoF allocation (d1 ;d2 ; 1 1 1 ; dk ) is said to be feasible if there
exist matrices Vk and Uk satisfying the two conditions (2) and (3).

Note that the condition (3) is true almost surely because all the elements
of channel matrices are randomly generated from a continuous distribution [8]. Therefore the existence of k and k satisfying the con-

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 60, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2012

6099

M N ;d

dition (2) determines feasibility of the K

k=1 ( k 2 k k ) system.
We call the feasible DoF by linear interference alignment LDoF (linear
DoF). In [10], authors have an insight that the feasibility of interference
alignment is closely related to proper systems, and it is known that improper systems are infeasible. That a system is proper means that the
cardinality of every subset of equations in the corresponding polynomial system obtained from (2) is less than or equal to the number of
variables involved in that subset of equations, and otherwise the system
is improper [10]. We summarize the proper system characterization of
[10] briefly.
At first, we define the precoding matrix k and zeroforcing matrix
k clearly not to count any superfluous variables that do not help with
interference alignment. Then, a k 2 k matrix k has the structure
given by

M d

M N MIMO

IV. PROPERNESS FOR -USER

2
INTERFERENCE CHANNELS

The maximum achievable LDoF that can be achieved through interference alignment over a limited number of dimensions is still an open
problem. In this section, we study the number of LDoF in terms of the
properness of previous section when the number of transmit antennas
and the number of receive antennas are the same for all the users of
network, i.e. k =
, k =
for 2 K. The -user
2
MIMO interference channel with constant channel coefficients is then
considered, and the asymmetric system in this section means that the
LDoF of each user can be different, i.e. K
k ). In other
k=1 ( 2
words, we study the maximum total LDoF tot = 1 + 1 1 1 + K ,
and the value of k ( 2 ) for the system K
k ) to be
k=1 ( 2
proper.
We start this section with a lemma that makes it easier to determine
the properness of an asymmetric system. From now on, we assume
(without loss of generality) 1  2  1 1 1  K .
Lemma 1: We assume the system K
k ) is proper.
k=1 ( 2
K +1
(
2
) = (
2
+ 1 users
Then, the system of
k
k=1
)(
2
1 ) 1 1 1( 2
K
K
+1 )( K +1  K ) is proper if
e[K +1]  v[K +1] , where e[i] and v[i] are the total number of equations and the total number of variables of the system ( 2
1 )( 2
2) 1 1 1 ( 2
i ), respectively.
Proof: We denote the set of equations of the system
(
2 1)( 2 2) 1 1 1 ( 2 K ) by

MN

N k

d k K

Vk = vk;1 vk;2 vIk;d 3 1 1 1 vk;d ;

(4)
 k;n ; 8n 2 f1; 1 1 1 ;dk g
where Id is the dk 2 dk identity matrix and v
are (Mk 0 dk ) 2 1 vectors. Similarly, a Nk 2 dk matrix Uk is defined
N;d
by

d d

M N

M N;d
d
d
M N;d

d
M N;d
M N;d
M
d
d
M N;d M

K
M N;d M N;d
N
N N
N
I
d
Uk = u k;1 u k;2 u k;3 1 1 1 u k;d ;
(5) N;d
M N;d
M N;d M N;d M N;d
 k;m ; 8m 2 f1; 1 1 1 ;dk g
where Id is the dk 2 dk identity matrix and u
are (Nk 0 dk ) 2 1 vectors. As a result, the total number of equations
kj
:
Ne and the total number of variables Nv in (2) are considered. Ne and EK = Emnjk;j 2K;k 6= j;m 2f1; 1 1 1 ;dk g;n 2f1; 1 1 1 ;dj g (12)
Nv are given by
We consider the set of equations of the system (M 2 N;d1 ) 1 1 1 (M 2
Ne =
dk dj
(6) N;dK +1 ), that is EK +1 . EK +1 can be partitioned into two sets,
k;j2K;k6=j
K
EK+1 = EK [ Enew
(13)
Nv = dk (Mk + Nk 0 2dk ):
(7)
k=1

where

kj represents the equation

Some notations are introduced. Emn

y H v = 0; j 6= k; j;k 2 K;
uk;m
kj j;n

8n 2 f1; 2; 1 1 1 ;dj g; 8m 2 f1; 2; 1 1 1 ;dk g

(8)

where vj;n is the nth column of precoding matrix Vj , and uk;m is the
mth column of zeroforcing matrix Uk . From (4) and (5), we note that
vj;n involves Mj 0 dj variables and uk;m involves Nk 0 dk variables.
Using the equations, the set of Ne equations is written as
kj jk;j 2K;k 6= j;m 2f1; 1 1 1 ;dk g;n 2f1; 1 1 1 ;dj g :
EK = Emn
(9)
The set of variables involved in an equation E is indicated by var(E ).
A K
k=1 (Mk 2 Nk ;dk ) system is proper if and only if
8S  EK ; jS j 
var(E ) = jV (S)j
(10)

E 2S

V (S) = E2S var(E ). Especially, for a symmetric system

M 2 N;d)K , the system
is proper if and only if the following simple

where
(

condition is satisfied.

M + N 0 (K + 1)d  0

(11)

For asymmetric systems, however, to determine whether the system is

proper or not could be very challenging because the number of subsets
of total equation set is very large even for relatively small number of
transmit and receive antennas.

(K +1)j ;E k(K +1) jk;j 2K;m;n0 2f1; 1 1 1 ;dK +1 g;

Enew = Emn
mn
m0 2f1; 1 1 1 ;dk g;n 2f1; 1 1 1 ;dj g : (14)
For any subset S of EK +1 , we can consider the properness condition
of the system through the following exclusive cases.
1) S  EK
It is obvious that jS j  jV (S )j, because the system
(M 2 N;d1 ) 1 1 1 (M 2 N;dK ) is proper.
2) S = S1 [ S 0 (S1  EK ;S 0  Enew ;S 0 6= )
(K +1)1 g. E (K +1)1 repreFor example, we assume that S 0 = fE11
11
sents the equation uyK +1;1 Hkj v1;1 = 0, and the number of variables involved in uyK +1;1 Hkj v1;1 = 0 is N 0 dK +1 + M 0 d1 ,
(K +1)1 )j = N 0 d
i.e. jV (E11
K +1 + M 0 d1 . And jV (Emk11 )j =
N 0 dk + M 0 d1 for(K+1)1
k = 1; 1 1 1 ;K and
m = 1; 1 1 1 ;dk . Therek1
)j  jV (Em1 )j because dK +1  dk .
fore, we have jV (E11
k11 does not exist in the set S1 for a certain (k;m), we replace
If Em
(
K
E11 +1)1 by Emk11 . We then have
S1 [ E11(K+1)1 = S1 [ fEmk11g
 V S1 [ Emk11  V S1 [ E11(K+1)1
(15)
k11 g is a subset of EK and EK is the
since EK is proper. S1 [fEm
equation set of the proper system. Therefore, the first inequality
(K +1)1 have variables of
k11 and E11
is satisfied. The equations Em
the vector

v1;1 in common, and so it does not lead a difference of

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 60, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2012

the number of variables. We do not need to consider the number

k1
k1
of variables of v1;1 . Since Em
1 does not exist in the set S1 ; Em1
(K +1)1
provides
provides N 0 dk variables of uk;m , although E11
N 0 dK +1 variables of uK +1;1 . Therefore, the second inequality
is also satisfied.
k1
We consider the other case where all the Em
1 s are already in the
set S1 . The number of users corresponding to the equations of the
set S is K + 1, that is, all the users provide the set of equations.
Note that the number of added equations is usually larger than
(K +1)j
the number of added variables when Enew is filled with Emn
k(K +1)
0
with fixed n . In that sense, the worst
for fixed m, and Em n
case is when the number of equations is closest to the number of
variables, and it corresponds to the case where the set S 0 contains
all the equations of Enew , which means that S1 = EK , S 0 =
Enew , and S = EK +1 .
(K +1)c
for a 2
If the set S 0 involves other elements such as Eab
f1; 1 1 1 ; dK+1 g, b 2 f1kc; 1 1 1 ; dcg, c 2 K, then the same process
can be applied. When Emb does not exist in the set S1 for a certain
kc
(k; m), we replace Eab(K+1)c by Emb
, and we can see that the
number of variables is larger than the number of equations. When
kc
all the Emb
s are already in the set S1 , the worst case is that the set
0
S contains all the equations of Enew . Similarly, elements formed
c (K +1)
for a0 2 f1; 1 1 1 ; dc g, b0 2 f1; 1 1 1 ; dK +1 g, c0 2 K
as Ea b
can be replaced by Eac kn if Eac kn does not exist in the set S1 for a
certain (k; n). And all the other process is the same as the above
[K +1]
 Nv[K+1] ,
proof. Therefore, we can conclude that if Ne
then jS j  jV (S )j, and this covers the case when S 0  Enew
because it is the worst case.
From the above two cases, the proof for the lemma is completed.
Lemma 1 provides an easy method to determine whether the system
is proper or not. For general asymmetric systems, it is computationally
complex to check the properness condition (10) because the number
of variables and the number of equations involved in each subset of
equations should be considered. The number of subsets of equations
is 2jE j 0 1 (except the empty set), which is very large in general.
In the system with symmetric number of antennas, however, Lemma
1 says that only the total number of equations and the total number of
variables are needed to determine the properness if an existing proper
system is extended by one more user. For example, we consider an
asymmetric system (625; 3)2 (625; 2). There are Ne = 42 equations
from (6), and there are 242 01 subsets of equations, which is too many
to check the properness condition (10). Lemma 1 says, however, the
system (62 5; 3)2 (62 5; 2) is proper simply because the system (62
5; 3)2 is proper from the properness condition of the symmetric system;
M + N 0 (K + 1)d = 6 + 5 0 3 1 3  0, and the total number of
equations Ne = 42 is less than the total number of variables Nv = 44
obtained by (7).
On the other hand, it is also interesting to study how the total
LDoF is divided, and allocated to each user. It is intuitively expected
that a system becomes more efficient when LDoFs of users dk are
distributed almost uniformly. This means that when we compare
the two LDoF allocations (d1 ; 1 1 1 ; dK ) = (3; 2; 1 1 1 ; 2; 2) and
(d1 ; 1 1 1 ; dK ) = (4; 2; 1 1 1 ; 2; 1), the former seems to be a better solution. For example, let us consider the symmetric system (4 2 4; 2)3 .
This is a proper system due to M + N 0 (K + 1)d = 0. However, the
system (4 2 4; 3)(4 2 4; 2)(4 2 4; 1) which has the same total LDoF
is improper since the total number of variables is less than the total
number of equations. This intuition can be interpreted in terms of the
general outer bounds of LDoF [18]. For the case of K user M 2 N
MIMO interference channels, the general outer bounds are given by

d  min(M; N )
d + d  min (max(M; N ); 2 min(M; N )) ; 8k; j 2K:
k

(16)

(17)

For a given system, because the right-hand sides of above inequalities

are fixed, we can see that the LDoF values of all the users are distributed
as uniformly as possible to satisfy above outer bound for all the pairs of
users. The following lemma proves the intuitive argument rigorously.
Lemma 2: For given numbers of transmit and receive antennas M
and N , the total LDoF dtot is maximized when the LDoF of each
user dk is as close as possible with each other (almost uniformly distributed), i.e. dmax = dmin (for symmetric systems) or dmax =
dmin + 1.
Proof: This lemma is deduced from the following two
propositions.
1) The total LDoF dtot increases as either the number of transmit
antennas or the number of receive antennas increase (and therefore
M + N increases).
2) If dtot is fixed, the value of M + N can be minimized when the
LDoF of each user dk are as close as possible.
The proposition 1) is trivial. A larger number of antennas increases
the space dimensions that allow more interference to align. For example, the total signal space dimension of receiver k is Nk of which dk
interference-free dimensions are to be reserved for the signal from the
kth transmitter. This is achieved when the interference from all other
transmitters lie in an independent subspace whose dimension can be at
most Nk 0 dk . When we assume Nk is increased to Nk +1, we can obtain either dk +1 interference-free dimensions or Nk 0 dk +1 interference dimensions which allow larger LDoF for other users. Therefore,
if a LDoF allocation (d1 ; 1 1 1 ; dK ) is feasible for M transmit antennas
and N receive antennas, (d1 ; 1 1 1 ; dK ) is also feasible for M transmit
antennas and N + 1 receive antennas.
For the proof of proposition 2), we consider a proper system
K
(M 2 N; dk ). Since the system is proper, the total number of
k=1
variables is greater than or equal to the number of equations. From (6)
and (7), we can obtain the following inequality.

dd
k

k;j 2K;k6=j

d (M + N 0 2d )
k

k=1

,2

d2 +

k=1
K

k=1

,d +

tot

k;j 2K;k6=j

d2 (M + N )

tot

k=1

k=1

d2 d  M + N
k

k=1

d d (M + N )
k

k=1

(18)

d2
It can be seen by Lagrangian optimization and geometry that K
k=1 k
is minimized when dk s are as close as possible with each other. This
represents that when the dk are as close as possible each other, the
required M + N for properness can be minimized. The proof for the
lemma is completed.
A. LDoF Computation
The LDoF for the general interference channel with constant channel
coefficients remains an open problem for more than two users. Only a
few scenarios have been presented. In [1], it is shown that the total
LDoF is 3M
2 in the three-user MIMO Gaussian interference channel
with M antennas at each node. In [4], the authors consider the R + 2
user MIMO interference channel with M antennas at each transmitter
and RM (R  2) antennas at each receiver. They show that the LDoF
RM
can be achieved for this channel without symbol
of RM + R +2
R 01
extension. In this subsection, we propose a method which computes the
maximum total LDoF to make a system proper and LDoF allocation for

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 60, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2012

M N

each user in the -user 2 MIMO interference channel with constant channel coefficients. Using the results of Lemma 1 and Lemma
2, the method is given as follows.
1 +N , if we find the minimum value 2 K
When we set = M
K+1
satisfies the inequality

2
2
M + N  K + K 0 n + n +K( ++ K1) 0(Kn 0 n) ;

(19)

then the maximum total LDoF to make a system proper is given by

dtot = K + K 0 n;

6101

From the method in the previous subsection, we can obtain the maximum LDoF that makes a system proper for the -user 2 MIMO
interference channel with constant channel coefficients.
Theorem 1: For the -user MIMO Gaussian interference channel
where each transmitter has
antennas, and each receiver has
antennas without symbol extension, the total LDoF to satisfy the properness condition is bounded above as

(M 2 N; dk ) = (M 2 N;  + 1)K0n (M 2 N; )n :

k=1

(21)

Now, we justify the above method, and especially, the inequality (19).
 MK++1N + 1 , the system Kk=1 ( 2
Since M
K++1N =

M N

dtot = d1 + d2 + 1 1 1 + dK
 K MK ++ N1 I MK ++ N1 2 Z
+ K MK ++ N1 0 1 I MK ++ N1 62 Z

(20)

and LDoF allocation for each user is given by

M N

B. Properness of a -User
2 MIMO Interference Channel
With Constant Channel Coefficients

IA

(24)

where is the set of integer. ( ) is the indicator function which has

the value 1 if the event is satisfied, and 0 otherwise.
The maximum LDoF allocation for each user is given as
( 1 1 1 1 K ) = ( 1 1 1 ) for the case that MK++1N is an integer,
and it is given as

 
<
M
N; dk ) = (M 2 N; )K is surely proper and (M 2 N;  + 1)K is d ; ; d
; ; 
surely improper according to (11). The total LDoF dtot has a value in
the range which is larger than or equal to K and less than K + K . We
use the previous assumption of d1  d2  1 1 1  dK , and according to
the Lemma 2, the LDoF of users are distributed almost uniformly. For
(d1 ; 1 1 1 ; dK ) =  + 1; 1 1 1 ;  + 1; ; 1 1 1 ; 
(25)
example, if dtot has the value K + 2, LDoF allocation (d1 ; 1 1 1 ; dK )
m01
K0m+1
is ( +1;  +1; ; 1 1 1 ;  ), not ( +2; ; 1 1 1 ;  ). Thus we can conclude
K
that the system k=1 (M 2 N; dk ) is in the form of (M 2 N;  + for the case of M + N =  (K + 1) + m, m 2 f1; 1 1 1 ; K g.
1)K0n (M 2 N; )n , for n 2 K. We, Know,
consider the conditions to
Proof: It is obvious for the case that M
K++1N is an integer. dtot =
have a proper system (M 2 N;  + 1) 0n (M 2 N;  )n for a certain K M +N is achieved by the symmetric system of d = M +N , that is
K+1
K+1
n.
M
+N K . For this case, the symmetric system is optimal
K
0
n
M
2
N;
First of all, the symmetric part (M 2 N;  +1)
of the system
K+1
since an asymmetric system can not achieve the LDoF by Lemma 2.
has to be proper, and the properness condition is simply
Now, we consider the case where M
K++1N is not an integer, and M + N
M + N 0 ( + 1)(K 0 n + 1)  0:
(22) can be expressed as  (K + 1) + m where  and m 2 f1; 1 1 1 ; K 0
1g are the quotient and the remainder, respectively. According to the
Now consider the (K 0 n + 1)-user system (M 2 N;  + method of the previous subsection, to obtain the maximum LDoF for
1)K0n (M 2 N; ). Since the condition (22) is satis- this system, we have to find the minimum value n which satisfies the
fied and therefore (M 2 N;  + 1)K 0n is proper, the inequality (19). It can be easily checked that the inequality (19) is satsystem (M 2 N;  + 1)K 0n (M 2 N;  ) is proper if isfied when n = K 0 m + 1, and not satisfied when n = K 0 m.
(nn+)i] according to Lemma 1, Therefore, the maximum total LDoF is
Ne[K0n+1][K(n0)n+i] Nv[K0n[+1]
K
0
where Ne
(n) and Nv
(n) are the total number
dtot = K + K 0 n = K + m 0 1
of equations and the total number of variables of the system
(M 2 N;  + 1)K0n (M 2 N; d)i for a given integer i, respec= (K + 1) + m 0  0 1
tively.
= M + N 0 MK ++ N1 0 1
In the same manner, (M 2 N;  + 1)K 0n (M 2 N;  )2 is proper
[
K
0
n
+2]
[
K
0
n
+2]
if Ne
(n)  Nv
(n), and so on. Consequently,
for the system (M 2 N;  + 1)K 0n (M 2 N;  )n to be proper,
= K MK ++ N1 0 1:
(26)
[
K
0
n
+
i
]
[
K
0
n
+
i
]
Ne
(n)  Nv
(n)(i = 1; 1 1 1 ; n) have to be
satisfied.
[K 0n+i](n) and Nv[K 0n+i](n) through (6) and (7). It can The system (M 2 N;  +1)K 0n (M 2 N; )n becomes (M 2 N;  +
We obtain Ne
m01(M 2 N; )K0m+1 . Therefore, the best LDoF allocation is
[K ]
[K ]
be shown that the condition Ne (n)  Nv (n) is a sufficient con- 1)
dition which covers all the other conditions including (22). That is, if given by (25).
In [10], the authors show the limitations of interference alignment
Ne[K](n)  Nv[K](n), we have
over MIMO channel with constant channel coefficients. According to
the Corollary 1 of [10], the LDoF of a proper symmetric system (M 2
Ne[K0n+i](n)  Nv[K0n+i](n); 8i 2 f1; 1 1 1 ; ng
N; d)K , which is normalized by a single user LDoF, is upper bounded
(23)
M + N 0 ( + 1)(K 0 n + 1)  0:
by
The rigorous proof for this is presented in the Appendix A. Therefore, if
dtot
max (M;N )
d
Ne[K](n)  Nv[K](n), the system (M 2 N;  +1)K0n (M 2 N; )n is
min (M;N )  1 + min (M;N ) 0 min (M;N ) : (27)
proper, and the total LDoF of dtot = K +K 0n can be achieved. After
[K ]
[K ]
some rearrangements, the condition Ne (n)  Nv (n) becomes Similar arguments can be applied to a proper asymmetric system with
symmetric number of antennas K
(19), and the inequality (19) is justified.
k=1 (M 2 N; dk ).

6102

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 60, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2012

Corollary 1: For a proper asymmetric system with symmetric

M +N
number of antennas K
k=1 ( 2 k ) where K +1 is not an integer,
the LDoF normalized by a single user LDoF is upper bounded by

M N;d
dtot  1 + max (M;N ) 0  + 1 :
min (M;N )
min (M;N )
min (M;N )

(28)

Proof: According to (26), the number of total LDoF for an asym+

0 0 1. The bound is
metric system is bounded by tot =
obtained by the normalization of min (
).
Corollary 1 says that the ratio of total LDoF to the single user LDoF
for MIMO interference channel with constant channel coefficients is
M;N )
bounded by the fixed value of 1 + max(
min(M;N ) while the ratio for a
K
time-varying channel is 2 which increases as the total number of users
increases.
The following corollary presents the relationship between the total
number of users and the LDoF for proper systems.
Corollary 2: When the number of transmit antennas and the number
of receive antennas are fixed, the total LDoF ( tot ) is an increasing
function of the total number of users , and the LDoF for each user
k is a decreasing function of .
Proof: From (24), the total LDoF increases as
increases. We consider the LDoF for each user in a -user system
[K] ). We divide + by + 1, and set the quoK ( 2
k
k=1
+
= ( + 1) + . The
tient to and the remainder to , i.e.
[K ]
LDoF of the th user k ( 2 K) is equal to +1 for 1   0 1,
and is equal to for   . Now, let us consider a ( + 1)-user
[K +1]
+1
system K
k ). We divide 0 + by + 2 and
k=1 ( 20
. We can consider two
set the quotient to and the remainder to
different cases; one is that 0 is same as , and the other is that 0 is
less than . When 0 is the same as , 0 has to be smaller than .
[K +1] is + 1 for 1   0 0 1
0 1, and it
Therefore, k
[K +1] is less than or equal
is otherwise. Therefore, for all 2 K k
[K ]
[K +1] which is either
to k . When 0 is less than , it is clear that k
[
K
]
0
0
+ 1 or
is less than or equal to k which is either + 1 or .

M N 
M;N

M N;d
M N K
m M N K 

k d k

k
 m k K
K
M N;d
M N K
m





m
d

k m <m

k ;d
d


d


d


Both (29) and (30) are equivalent to

M + N  ( + 1)(K 0 n) + i + ((++1)1)((KK 00 nn)) ++ i i ;

for i 2 f0; 1; 1 1 1 ;ng:
2

(32)

Therefore, we prove that the right-hand side of (31) is larger than or

equal to the right-hand side of (32). The difference between the righthand side of (31) and the right-hand side of (32) has to be larger than
or equal to 0, that is

2
2
C + BA++Cn 0 B +A i  0
(33)
where A = ( + 1)(K 0 n) + i;B = ( + 1)2 (K 0 n), and
C = (n 0 i). (33) is equivalent to
AC (A + C ) + A(B + 2n) 0 (A + C )(B + 2i)
2
2
2
= AC (A + C ) + A( n 0  i) 0 C (B +  i)
2
2
= C (A + AC + A 0 B 0  i)  0:
(34)
Since C  0, it is equivalent to A2 + AC + A 0 B 0  2 i  0. After
some computations, we have

A2 + AC + A 0 B 0 2i
2
= A(A + C +  ) 0 B 0  i
= (K + K 0 n 0 n + i)(K + K 0 n +  )
0 ( + 1)2 (K 0 n) 0 2 i
= f( + 1)D + ig f( + 1)D + n +  g

(35)
0 ( + 1)2 D 0 2 i
m
where D = K 0 n 2 K. We can express f( + 1)D + igf( + 1)D +
n + g by ( + 1)2D2 + 2 i + E where E > 0 is the remaining terms.
We then have

f( +1)D + ig f( +1)D + n + g0( +1)2 D 02 i = E> 0; (36)
V. CONCLUSION
We analyzed the LDoF for the K -user M 2 N MIMO interfer- since D and E are clearly positive. This completes the proof.
m
m

ence channel with constant channel coefficients. The LDoF analysis

is based on the properness condition, which requires that the number
of variables is larger than or equal to the number of equations in the
corresponding polynomial system. We derived several properties of the
proper systems and the LDoF allocation method. By using these results,
we propose the method to compute the properness-based LDoF for the
-user
2 MIMO interference channel with constant channel
coefficients. We also consider the total LDoF upperbound achievable
by a linear interference alignment. A key contribution of this paper is
that the maximum total LDoF (upperbound) is derived for a partially
symmetric MIMO interference channels where the number of transmit
antennas and the number of receive antennas are symmetric, but the
LDoF of each user may be different (asymmetric).

M N

APPENDIX A
PROOF OF (23)

Ne[K](n)  Nv[K](n), we have

Ne[K n+i](n)  Nv[K n+i](n); 8i 2 f1; 1 1 1 ;ng (29)
M + N 0 ( + 1)(K 0 n + 1)  0:
(30)
[K ]
[K ]
Through (18), we can easily show that Ne (n)  Nv (n) is equivIn this section, we verify that if
0

alent to

M + N  ( + 1)(K 0 n) + n + ((++1)1)((KK 00 nn)) ++ nn : (31)

2

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M 2N

Analysis of Max-Consensus Algorithms in

Wireless Channels
Franck Iutzeler, Philippe Ciblat, and Jrmie Jakubowicz

AbstractIn this paper, we address the problem of estimating the maximal value over a sensor network using wireless links between them. We
introduce two heuristic algorithms and analyze their theoretical performance. More precisely, i) we prove that their convergence time is finite with
probability one, ii) we derive an upper-bound on their mean convergence
time, and iii) we exhibit a bound on their convergence time dispersion.
Index TermsConsensus, distributed algorithms, gossip, wireless sensor
networks.

I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless Sensor Networks are systems composed of scattered agents
with limited power and computational abilities. These agents may acquire some data and communicate through a wireless link to some other
agents. Their goal is to auto-organize in order to compute a function of

6103

the collected data in a distributed fashion [1]. For instance, if temperature sensors are deployed in a hostile environment (e.g., mountains) and
one wants to know the average temperature in the region by looking at
any sensor, a simple idea would be to make the sensors randomly wake
up and average their value with another sensor so that they all converge to the average value of the initial measurements of the network.
Namely, the sensors want to achieve consensus over the average value
of the initial measurements. This problem was extensively studied in
the past few years [2][4]. However, the average is not always the most
useful value to share. Indeed, in some applications, the maximal value
may be of greater interest.
For example, if a sensor network has to transmit information periodically (e.g., the average temperature of the region in the previous
scheme) through a costly link, it would be of interest to elect the sensor
which has the most power resource to operate that communication. To
do so, one has to estimate the maximal amount of energy left in the
sensor battery (along with their ID) in a distributed fashion using the
wireless links between some of them. Another useful application deals
with distributed access control by having the network elect a node to
transmit. For instance, the agents that want to send information i) draw
a number in a common window and then ii) reach consensus over the
maximal value (and the ID of the associated agent). The sensor with
the maximal value then sends its packet to the access point.
A simple way to estimate the maximum value would be to mimic the
algorithm introduced for averaging in [3]. The agents would wake up
randomly and exchange their value with another reachable sensor randomly chosen; both sensors would then keep the maximum between
their former and received values. However, since the communications
between the sensors are wireless, it seems more natural for the initiating sensor to broadcast its value, and then the sensors which have
received the information would update their value accordingly. In this
work, we will analyze algorithms i) based on pairwise communications
and ii) based on broadcast communications. Note that an averaging algorithm based on broadcast communications has been proposed in [5],
but it does not perform well due to the non-conservation of the initial
sum. This is not an issue for estimating the maximum value since the
maximum value is preserved.
A distributed algorithm is thus relevant to estimating a maximum
value over a network through wireless communications, which we propose to address hereafter. We prove the convergence of both abovementioned algorithms and analyze their convergence speed.
This paper is organized as follows: models and algorithms are reported and linked with related works in Section II. In Section III, we
derive our mathematical results. In Section IV, numerical illustrations
are given. Concluding remarks are drawn in Section V.
II. MODELS AND ALGORITHMS
A. Assumptions on the Wireless Network

Manuscript received February 22, 2012; revised June 01, 2012 and July 24,
2012; accepted July 24, 2012. Date of publication August 03, 2012; date of
current version October 09, 2012. The associate editor coordinating the review
of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Prof. Stefano Marano.
This work was partially granted by the French Defence Agency (DGA). This
work has been presented in part at the Asilomar Conference, November 2011.
F. Iutzeler and P. Ciblat are with the Institut Mines-Tlcom/Tlcom ParisTech; CNRS LTCI, Paris 75013, France (e-mail: iutzeler@telecom-paristech.fr;
philippe.ciblat@enst.fr).
J. Jakubowicz is with the Institut Mines-Tlcom/Tlcom SudParis, Evry
91000, France (e-mail: jeremie.jakubowicz@it-sudparis.eu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSP.2012.2211593

Consider a network of N sensors modeled as an undirected graph

G = (V; E ) where V is the set of agentsthe vertices of the
graphand E is the set of links between agentsthe edges of the
graph. We assume that each link is error-free. To indicate that a couple
of agents (v; w) are neighbors (we also use the term adjacent), we
use the notation v  w . For any set S , we denote its cardinality by
jS j. Obviously, we have jV j = N . The set of neighbors of agent v
is denoted Nv . We also define @ (S ), the set of edges going out of
set S (that is, edges with one end in S and one end out of S ) and
G = min S@(S) the vertex expansion. Each agent v has an initial
scalar measurement x0 (v ). The set of all initial measurements is thus
j

1053-587X/$31.00 2012 IEEE