Robust Design for Amplify-and-Forward MIMO Relay Systems With Direct Link and Imperfect Channel Information

In this paper, we propose statistically robust design for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay systems with the direct source-destination link and imperfect channel state information (CSI). The minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) of the signal waveform estimation at the destination node is adopted as the design criterion. We develop two iterative methods to solve the nonconvex joint source, relay, and receiver optimization problem. In particular, we derive the structure of the optimal relay precoding matrix and show the effect of CSI mismatch on the structure of the optimal robust source and relay matrices. The proposed algorithms generalize the transceiver design of MIMO relay systems with the direct link to the practical scenario of imperfect CSI knowledge. Simulation results demonstrate an improved performance of the proposed algorithms with respect to the conventional methods at various levels of CSI mismatch.