Interference alignment using variational mean field annealing

We study the problem of interference alignment in the multiple-input multiple-output interference channel. Aiming at minimizing the interference leakage power relative to the receiver noise level, we use the deterministic annealing approach to solve the optimization problem. In the corresponding probabilistic formulation, the precoders and the orthonormal bases of the desired signal subspaces are variables distributed on the complex Stiefel manifold. To enable analytically tractable computations, we resort to the variational mean field approximation and thus obtain a novel iterative algorithm for interference alignment. We also show that the iterative leakage minimization algorithm by Gomadam et al. and the alternating minimization algorithm by Peters and Heath, Jr. are instances of our method. Finally, we assess the performance of the proposed algorithm through computer simulations.