Interference alignment and degrees of freedom of the K-user interference channel

For the fully connected K user wireless interference channel where the channel coefficients are time-varying and are drawn from a continuous distribution, the sum capacity is characterized as C(SNR) = K/2 log(SNR) + o(log(SNR)). Thus, the K user time-varying interference channel almost surely has K/2 degrees of freedom. Achievability is based on the idea of interference alignment. Examples are also provided of fully connected K user interference channels with constant (not time-varying) coefficients where the capacity is exactly achieved by interference alignment at all SNR values. Index Terms--Capacity, degrees of freedom, interference alignment, interference channel, multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO), multiplexing.