Degrees of freedom for mutually interfering broadcast channels

In this paper, we study spatial degree-of-freedom (DOF) for two mutually interfering broadcast channels (IBC). As the demand for space-division multiple access (SDMA) increases, the IBC where each link has a single transmit node and multiple receive nodes becomes important. This paper presents the results of the lower and upper bounds on the DOF of the IBC. From the derived results, it is shown that for most cases, zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming can achieve the optimal DOF of the IBC except for some special cases. Also, we identify a condition that disabling receive cooperation in the multiple-input multiple-output interference channels causes no DOF loss. It is confirmed that we cannot expect a DOF improvement by enabling in-cell receive cooperation if in at least one of two BSs, the number of antennas is greater than or equal to that of users per cell. Furthermore, we observe a positive result that as the number of users goes to infinity, the total DOF of the IBC converges to the interference-free DOF, which is the maximum achievable DOF in the absence of the inter-cell interference.