By definition, users of a multiple access communications system share the same medium, and such shared use leads to mutual interference. The usual methods for combating interference include channel assignment, power control and receiver signal processing. Interference avoidance is a recently developed tool which presupposes the existence of
agile
transceivers which can adapt their modulation and reception methods to suit the ambient environment. Thus interference avoidance, as implied by the name, seeks to place each user in that portion of the signal space where there is least interference. Greedy iterative application of this procedure optimizes various measures of multiple access performance including sum capacity and user capacity. As such, interference avoidance should be especially useful in unlicensed environments where no central control is assumed.