Pre- and post-FFT interference leakage minimization for MIMO OFDM networks

Interference alignment (IA) has been shown to achieve the maximum degrees of freedom in the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) K-user interference channel (IFC). In the presence of frequency-selective channels, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is typically used to deal with the multipath nature of the channel. While IA techniques can be applied in a per-subcarrier basis (post-FFT), the existence of symbol timing offsets (STOs) between the desired and the interfering OFDM symbols decreases the system performance dramatically. To solve this problem, we design pre-FFT precoders and decoders for single-beam MIMO IFCs for OFDM transmissions. Since the IA decoders operate before the FFT, they mitigate the interference before synchronization takes place. We show that our proposed scheme improves the system performance when STOs occur, in comparison with traditional post-FFT IA techniques. We provide simulation results to compare post and pre-FFT beamforming techniques and to illustrate the performance of the proposed method.