On the Feasibility of Interference Alignment in Ultra-Dense Millimeter-Wave Cellular Networks

Recent studies have demonstrated that millimeterwave cellular networks may operate either in the noise- or in the interference-limited regime, depending on several parameters, which include the density of base stations, the density and size of obstacles/blockages, the antenna beamwidth, and the transmission bandwidth. The objective of the present paper is to exploit tools from stochastic geometry for obtaining a mathematically tractable framework that allows us to identify the operating conditions under which millimeter-wave cellular networks operate in the inference-limited regime and to assess the potential advantages of interference alignment, by taking into account the overhead cost of base station cooperation due to the estimation of channel state information