A New Outer Bound and the Noisy-Interference Sum–Rate Capacity for Gaussian Interference Channels

A new outer bound on the capacity region of Gaussian interference channels is developed. The bound combines and improves existing genie-aided methods and is shown to give the sum–rate capacity for noisy interference as defined in this paper. Specifically, it is shown that if the channel crosstalk coefficient magnitudes lie below thresholds defined by the power constraints then single-user detection at each receiver is sum–rate optimal, i.e., treating the interference as noise incurs no loss in performance. This is the first capacity result for the Gaussian interference channel with weak to moderate interference. Furthermore, for certain mixed (weak and strong) interference scenarios, the new outer bounds give a corner point of the capacity region.