Low-Complexity Blind Interference Suppression With Reconfigurable Antennas

Abstract

We present a new low-complexity interference management algorithm that exploits reconfigurable antennas, removes most of the interference signal power in a K-user interference channel, and achieves the promised but unrealized gain of interference alignment in low-to-medium signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) range. The reconfigurable antenna includes several elements, each controlled individually using a radio frequency (RF) switch. The antenna has only one RF chain, resulting in simple hardware design and enabling low-complexity algorithms. We exploit space-time diversity to find two separate combinations of activating or deactivating antenna elements to allow for interference neutralization/elimination. Finding such states is a cumbersome task for which we develop novel, efficient algorithms. We further devise simple encoding and decoding with short precoder length to exploit the benefits of our designs. Our implementation does not rely on channel state information at the transmitters; works at finite signal-to-noise ratios, unlike the typical degrees-of-freedom results; and works in slow-fading environments. We calculate the average achievable rates, the minimum number of elements to reach a specific level of interference suppression, and we provide outage analysis of our technique.