Joint Optimization of Source Precoding and Relay Beamforming in Wireless MIMO Relay Networks

This paper considers joint linear processing at multi-antenna sources and one multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay station for both one-way and two-way relay-assisted wireless communications. The one-way relaying is applicable in the scenario of downlink transmission by a multi-antenna base station to multiple single-antenna users with the help of one MIMO relay. In such a scenario, the objective of join linear processing is to maximize the information throughput to users. The design problem is equivalently formulated as the maximization of the worst signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) among all users subject to various transmission power constraints. Such a program of nonconvex objective minimization under nonconvex constraints is transformed to a canonical d.c. (difference of convex functions/sets) program of d.c. function optimization under convex constraints through nonconvex duality with zero duality gap. An efficient iterative algorithm is then applied to solve this canonical d.c program. For the scenario of using one MIMO relay to assist two sources exchanging their information in two-way relying manner, the joint linear processing aims at either minimizing the maximum mean square error (MSE) or maximizing the total information throughput of the two sources. By applying tractable optimization for the linear minimum MSE estimator and d.c. programming, an iterative algorithm is developed to solve these two optimization problems. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methods substantially outperform previously-known joint optimization methods.