  To enable densely deployed base stations (BSs) or access points (APs) to
serve an increasing number of users and provide diverse mobile services, we
need to improve spectrum utilization in wireless communication networks.
Although spectral efficiency (SE) can be enhanced via smart and dynamic
resource allocation, interference has become a major impediment in improving
SE. There have been numerous interference management (IM) proposals at the
interfering transmitter or the victim transmitter/receiver separately or
cooperatively. Moreover, the existing IM schemes rely mainly on the use of
channel state information (CSI). However, in some communication scenarios, the
option to adjust the interferer is not available, and, in the case of downlink
transmission, it is always difficult or even impossible for the victim receiver
to acquire necessary information for IM. Based on the above observations, we
first propose a novel IM technique, called interference steering (IS). By
making use of both CSI w.r.t. and data carried in the interfering signal, IS
generates a signal to modify the spatial feature of the original interference,
so that the steered interference at the victim receiver is orthogonal to its
intended signal. We then apply IS to an infrastructurebased enterprise wireless
local area network (WLAN) in which the same frequency band is reused by
adjacent basic service sets (BSSs) with overlapping areas. With IS, multiple
nearby APs could simultaneously transmit data on the same channel to their
mobile stations (STAs), thus enhancing spectrum reuse. Our in-depth simulation
results show that IS significantly improves network SE over existing IM
schemes.
