Cellular Networks With Finite Precision CSIT: GDoF Optimality of Multi-Cell TIN and Extremal Gains of Multi-Cell Cooperation

We study the generalized degrees-of-freedom (GDoF) of cellular networks under finite precision channel state information at the transmitters (CSIT). We consider downlink settings modeled by the interfering broadcast channel (IBC) under no multi-cell cooperation, and the overloaded multiple-input-single-output broadcast channel (MISO-BC) under full multi-cell cooperation. We focus on three regimes of interest: the mc-TIN regime, where a scheme based on treating inter-cell interference as noise (mc-TIN) was shown to be GDoF optimal for the IBC; the mc-CTIN regime, where the GDoF region achievable by mc-TIN is convex without the need for time-sharing; and the mc-SLS regime which extends a previously identified regime, where a simple layered superposition (SLS) scheme is optimal for the 3-transmitter-3-user MISO-BC, to overloaded cellular-type networks with more users than transmitters. We first show that the optimality of mc-TIN for the IBC extends to the entire mc-CTIN regime when CSIT is limited to finite precision. The converse proof of this result relies on a new application of aligned images bounds. We then extend the IBC converse proof to the counterpart overloaded MISO-BC, obtained by enabling full transmitter cooperation. This, in turn, is utilized to show that a multi-cell variant of the SLS scheme is optimal in the mc-SLS regime under full multi-cell cooperation, albeit only for 2-cell networks. The overwhelming combinatorial complexity of the GDoF region stands in the way of extending this result to larger networks. Alternatively, we appeal to extremal network analysis, recently introduced by Chan et al., and study the GDoF gain of multi-cell cooperation over mc-TIN in the three regimes of interest. We show that this extremal GDoF gain is bounded by small constants in the mc-TIN and mc-CTIN regimes, yet scales logarithmically with the number of cells in the mc-SLS regime.