Linear Beamformer Design for Interference Alignment via Rank Minimization

This paper proposes a new framework for the design of transmit and receive beamformers for interference alignment (IA) without symbol extensions in multi-antenna cellular networks. We consider IA in a G cell network with K users/cell, N antennas at each base station (BS) and M antennas at each user. The proposed framework is developed by recasting the conditions for IA as two sets of rank constraints, one on the rank of interference matrices, and the other on the transmit beamformers in the uplink. The interference matrix consists of all the interfering vectors received at a BS from the out-of-cell users in the uplink. Using these conditions and the crucial observation that the rank of interference matrices under alignment can be determined beforehand, this paper develops two sets of algorithms for IA. The first part of this paper develops rank minimization algorithms for IA by iteratively minimizing a weighted matrix norm of the interference matrix. Different choices of matrix norms lead to reweighted nuclear norm minimization (RNNM) or reweighted Frobenius norm minimization (RFNM) algorithms with significantly different per-iteration complexities. Alternately, the second part of this paper devises an alternating minimization (AM) algorithm where the rank-deficient interference matrices are expressed as a product of two lower-dimensional matrices that are then alternately optimized. Simulation results indicate that RNNM, which has a per-iteration complexity of a semidefinite program, is effective in designing aligned beamformers for proper-feasible systems with or without redundant antennas, while RFNM and AM, which have a per-iteration complexity of a quadratic program, are better suited for systems with redundant antennas.