Embracing interference in wireless systems

the long version

The wireless medium is a shared resource. If nearby devices transmit at the same time, their signals interfere, resulting in a collision. In traditional networks, collisions cause the loss of the transmitted information. For this reason, wireless networks have been designed with the assumption that interference is intrinsically harmful and must be avoided. This book takes an alternate approach: instead of viewing interference as an inherently counterproductive phenomenon that should to be avoided, we design practical systems that transform interference into a harmless, and even beneficial, phenomenon.