A zero-forcing partial decode-and-forward scheme for the Gaussian MIMO relay channel

In this paper, we consider achievable rates for the Gaussian multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay channel that can be obtained with the relay using the partial decode-and-forward scheme. The partial decode-and-forward strategy allows to optimize the amount of information the relay has to decode and can hence be seen as a generalization of the decode-and-forward strategy, where the relay must decode the entire source message. Since we cannot determine the maximal achievable partial decode-and-forward rate, we propose a suboptimal approach that is based on zero-forcing the interference the relay would suffer from the part of the source signal that it is not required to decode. For this purpose, a zero-forcing receive filter is introduced at the relay. We then show that, if the receive filter is fixed, standard convex optimization techniques can be used to evaluate the best rate our suboptimal partial decode-and-forward scheme can achieve. Simulation results demonstrate that the coding scheme we propose significantly outperforms the decode-and-forward scheme and/or approximates the cut-set bound for different network scenarios.