Interference Cancellation in Multi-User MIMO Relay Networks Using Beamforming and Precoding

In this paper, we investigate transmission methods for a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) network that utilizes base stations (BS) cooperation. To eliminate the interference between users, iterative zero forcing- (ZF) and iterative Tomlinson Harashima precoding-based (THP) schemes are proposed. In the iterative ZF-based scheme, all interference is cancelled by using the transmit-receive weights. To reduce the complexity of iterative ZF scheme, in the iterative THP-based scheme, the interference is cancelled by using transmit-receive weights and the THP. To achieve symbol error rate (SER) fairness among different users and further improve the performance of multi-user MIMO relay systems, we develop optimal and sub-optimal power allocation (PA) methods that ensure signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR) across all users are equal, under the power constraints at both BSs and relay station (RS). In the optimal PA scheme, the PA is done at both BSs and RS. In the sub-optimal scheme, to reduce the computational complexity of optimal PA significantly, the PA is done only at BSs, and at the RS a power scaling is performed to satisfy the RS power constraint. The simulation results show that by using optimal and sub-optimal PAs, the iterative ZF-based scheme outperforms the iterative THP-based scheme by an average of 0.4 dB at the cost of a four times higher complexity.