Generalized Degrees of Freedom of the Symmetric Gaussian K User Interference Channel

We characterize the generalized degrees of freedom of the K user symmetric Gaussian interference channel where all desired links have the same signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and all undesired links carrying interference have the same interference-to-noise ratio, INR = SNR(alpha). We find that the number of generalized degrees of freedom per user, d(alpha), does not depend on the number of users, so that the characterization is identical to the 2 user interference channel with the exception of a singularity at alpha = 1 where d(1) = 1/K. The achievable schemes use multilevel coding with a nested lattice structure that opens the possibility that the sum of interfering signals can be decoded at a receiver even though the messages carried by the interfering signals are not decodable.