System-level performance of distributed cooperation

Distributed cooperation schemes such as Interference Alignment hold the promise of an increased number of spatial degrees of freedom and, with that, of substantially higher spectral efficiencies. Most results available to date, however, have been obtained in simplified settings featuring a small number of transmitters and receivers in isolation. While such controlled settings are excellent platforms to develop ideas and build intuition, they also conceal important aspects that are inherent to actual wireless systems. Chief among these is the fact that any small set of cooperating transmitters and receivers is bound to be embedded within a large system featuring many other transmitters and receivers. This paper studies the fundamental performance of IA, in the context of a large cellular network, and contrasts it with that of non-cooperative MIMO.