Maximum link activation in wireless networks with cooperative transmission and successive interference cancellation

We consider a wireless network with transmitters and receivers sharing a common channel. We study the maximum link activation (LA) problem under a novel setup, where the transmitters are able to cooperatively transmit data and the receivers have interference cancellation (IC) capabilities. In this version of LA problem, determining which transmitters should jointly transmit and to whom, as well as the proper IC patterns at receivers, to achieve the maximum number of compatible links, are intertwined. We provide and prove theoretical results related to problem complexity. From the theoretical insights, an algorithm composed by local search and bipartite matching is proposed. Numerical results are presented for performance evaluation. The results show the satisfactory performance of the algorithm and demonstrate the benefit of jointly deploying cooperative transmission and successive IC in LA.