Asynchronous Interference Alignment

A constant K-user interference channel in which the users are not symbol-synchronous is considered. It is shown that the asynchronism among the users facilitates aligning interfering signals at each receiver node while it does not affect the total number of degrees of freedom (DoF) of the channel. To achieve the total K/2 DoF of the channel when single antenna nodes are used, a novel practical interference alignment scheme is proposed wherein the alignment task is performed with the help of asynchronous delays which inherently exist among the received signals at each receiver node. When each node is equipped with M > 1 antennas, it is argued that the same alignment scheme is sufficient to achieve the total MK/2 DoF of the medium when all links between collocated antennas experience the same asynchronous delay.