This paper addresses the following question regarding Gaussian networks: Is there an alternative to decoding interference or treating interference as Gaussian noise? To state our result, we study a decentralized network of one primary user (PU) and one secondary user (SU) modeled by a two-user Gaussian interference channel. In one scenario, the primary transmitter is constellation-based and PUs codebook is constructed over its modulation signal set. Assuming SU is aware of the constellation points of PU, the interference plus noise at the secondary receiver is modeled by a mixed Gaussian process. We show that SU can achieve larger rates by matching its decoder to the actual interference plus noise compared with the case where the secondary receiver performs nearest neighbor decoding (NND).
In another scenario, we assume that PU utilizes a predetermined point-to-point code. We ask if SU can utilize its knowledge about PUs codebook without decoding PUs codewords. The proposed strategy assumes each transmitted codeword of SU overlaps with infinitely many transmitted codewords of PU, referred to as the unequal codeword-length (UCL) strategy. The secondary receiver views PU as a virtual user that is constellation-based and its modulation signal set is the codebook of the actual PU. UCL is compared with other strategies, namely, interference cancellation (IC), joint decoding, and NND. It is shown that UCL can outperform both IC and NND simultaneously.