High SNR Analysis for MIMO Broadcast Channels: Dirty Paper Coding Versus Linear Precoding

In this correspondence, we compare the achievable throughput for the optimal strategy of dirty paper coding (DPC) to that achieved with suboptimal and lower complexity linear precoding techniques (zero-forcing and block diagonalization). Both strategies utilize all available spatial dimensions and therefore have the same multiplexing gain, but an absolute difference in terms of throughput does exist. The sum rate difference between the two strategies is analytically computed at asymptotically high SNR. Furthermore, the difference is not affected by asymmetric channel behavior when each user has a different average SNR. Weighted sum rate maximization is also considered. In the process, it is shown that allocating user powers in direct proportion to user weights asymptotically maximizes weighted sum rate.