On Degrees of Freedom Region of MIMO Networks Without Channel State Information at Transmitters

We study the effect of the absence of channel knowledge at the transmitters for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) networks. Specifically, we assume perfect channel state information at the receivers, no channel state information at the transmitter(s), and independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading across antennas, users and time slots. We provide the characterization of the degrees of freedom (DoF) region for a 2-user MIMO broadcast channel. We then provide a DoF region outer bound for a 2-user MIMO interference channel. This bound is shown to be tight for all possible combinations of the number of antennas at each node except for one case. To analyze the unsolved case, we point out the potential of interference alignment in the 2-user MIMO interference channel with no channel state information at the transmitters. As a byproduct, we explore a special class of MIMO broadcast channels where the capacity region is established by using the outer bound developed in the DoF analysis.