The Generalized Degrees of Freedom of the Interference Relay Channel with Strong Interference

The interference relay channel (IRC) under strong interference is considered. A high-signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) generalized degrees of freedom (GDoF) characterization of the capacity is obtained. To this end, a new GDoF upper bound is derived based on a genie-aided approach. The achievability of the GDoF is based on cooperative interference neutralization. It turns out that the relay increases the GDoF even if the relay-destination link is weak. Moreover, in contrast to the standard interference channel, the GDoF is not a monotonically increasing function of the interference strength in the strong interference regime.