On the Optimality of Treating Inter-Cell Interference as Noise in Uplink Cellular Networks
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In this paper, we explore the optimality of treating interference as noise (TIN) in cellular networks. We focus on uplink scenarios modeled by the Gaussian interfering multiple access channel (IMAC), comprising K mutually interfering multiple access channels (MACs), each formed by an arbitrary number of transmitters communicating independent messages to one receiver. We define TIN for this setting as a scheme in which each MAC (or cell) performs a power-controlled version of its capacity-achieving strategy, with Gaussian codebooks and successive decoding, while treating interference from all other MACs (i.e. inter-cell interference) as noise. We characterize the generalized degrees-of-freedom (GDoF) region achieved through the proposed TIN scheme, and then identify conditions under which this achievable region is a polyhedron (and hence convex) without the need for time-sharing. We then tighten these polyhedrality conditions and identify a regime in which the proposed TIN scheme achieves the entire GDoF region of the IMAC and is within a constant gap of the entire capacity region.
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