Widely linear block-diagonalization type precoding in massive mimo systems with IQ imbalance

In this paper, we propose widely-linear blockdiagonalization (BD) type precoding techniques to alleviate the impact of IQ imbalance in the downlink Massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. We first introduce a real-valued signal model and then develop widely-linear BD (WL-BD) type precoding algorithms, i.e., WL-BD, widely linear regularized BD (WL-RBD) and widely linear simplified generalized MMSE channel inversion (WL-S-GMI). We also present analysis of the sum-rate and multiplexing gain achieved by the proposed WLBD for scenarios with and without IQ imbalance. Numerical results verify the analysis and show that WL-BD type precoding methods significantly outperform their conventional counterparts with IQ imbalance and approach the ideal case.