Sourcetointerference

Sourcetointerference is a conceptual metric used in telecommunications to quantify the impact of a specific transmitter (source) on other receivers in the network. The term is used in research contexts to study how individual sources contribute to interference relative to the intended signal power at affected receivers.

Formally, the sourcetointerference (STI) from a source s to a receiver r is defined as STI_s,r = P_i(s,r) / P_d(s,r), where P_i(s,r) is the average interference power at r caused by transmissions from s, and P_d(s,r) is the power of the desired signal received at r from its intended transmitter. In some definitions, STI may be normalized by the receiver’s noise floor or by total received power to express the interference-to-signal ratio or interference-to-noise ratio.

Measurement and modeling: STI can be estimated through simulations (ray tracing, Monte Carlo), analytical path-loss models, or field measurements. It accounts for factors such as transmit power, spectral mask, antenna patterns, channel fading, and receiver filtering.

Applications: STI supports network planning, interference management, spectrum sharing, and regulatory compliance by identifying high-impact sources and prioritizing mitigation strategies such as power control, beamforming, spectrum partitioning, or scheduling.

Limitations: The metric is inherently scenario-specific and depends on how sources and receivers are defined, time averaging, and the aggregation of multiple sources. It does not replace more fundamental metrics like SINR or SIR but complements them.

In practice, sourcetointerference remains largely a research concept and is not yet standardized across industries.