Interference Alignment for Multi-cluster Over-the-Air Computation

Abstract

One of the main challenges facing Internet of Things (IoT) networks is managing interference caused by the large number of devices communicating simultaneously, particularly in multi-cluster networks where multiple devices simultaneously transmit to their respective receiver. Over-the-Air Computation (AirComp) has emerged as a promising solution for efficient real-time data aggregation, yet its performance suffers in dense, interference-limited environments. To address this, we propose a novel Interference Alignment (IA) scheme tailored for up-link AirComp systems. Unlike previous approaches, the proposed method scales to an arbitrary number $\sf K$ of clusters and enables each cluster to exploit half of the available channels, instead of only $\tfrac{1}{\sf K}$ as in time-sharing. In addition, we develop schemes tailored to scenarios where users are shared between adjacent clusters.