Spatial Interference Alignment with Limited Precoding Matrix Feedback in a Wireless Multi-User Interference Channel for Smart Grids

Cellular communication provides an efficient, flexible, long-lived, and reliable communication technology for smart grids to improve the automated analysis, demand response, adoptive control, and coordination between the generator and consumers. With the expansion of wireless networks and the increase of access devices, interference has become a major problem that limits the performance of cellular wireless communication systems for smart grids. Spatial interference alignment (IA) is an effective method to eliminate interference and improve the capacity of wireless communication networks. This paper provides the sufficient conditions of spatial interference alignment operating with limited precoding matrix feedback for a K -user MIMO interference channel. Each receiver feeds the matrix index of the transmitting precoder back to the corresponding transmitter through an interference-free and error-free link. We calculated the number of feedback bits required to achieve the maximum theoretical multiplexing gain for the spatial interference alignment schemes considered and demonstrate the feasibility of spatial interference alignment under the limited feedback constraint investigated. It is shown that in order to maintain the same spatial multiplexing gain as that of the idealized scheme relying on perfect channel state information, the number of feedback bits per receiver scales as N d ≥ d i ( M − d i ) log 2 SNR , where M and d i denote the number of transmit (receive) antennas and the number of data steams for user i . Finally, the analytical results were verified by simulations for practical interference alignment schemes relying on limited precoding matrix feedback indices.