Linear precoder designs over MIMO interference channels with finite-alphabet inputs

This paper investigates the linear precoder design for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) K-user interference channels with finite alphabet inputs. We first obtain the general explicit expressions of the achievable rate of each user in MIMO interference channel systems. We study optimal transmission strategies in both high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and low SNR regions. We show that given finite alphabet inputs, a simple power allocation design can achieve optimal performance. In contrast, the well-known interference alignment technique for Gaussian input scenarios, only utilizes a partial interference-free signal space for transmission and leads to a constant performance loss when it is applied to finite-alphabet input scenarios. We determine this constant rate loss at high SNR. Moreover, we establish necessary conditions for the linear precoder design of the weighted sum-rate maximization. We also develop an efficient iterative algorithm for determining precoding matrices of all the users. Our numerical results show that for the practical digital modulated signals from discrete constellations, the proposed iterative algorithm achieves considerably higher sum-rate than the existing methods.