Relaying Schemes for MIMO Broadcast Channels: Coexistence of Direct-Link and Relay-Link Users

The combination of relay and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques can significantly benefit the signal transmission in cellular networks. In this work, we propose a novel relaying scheme for the relay assisted MIMO broadcast channel including user classification and preceding. The users are firstly classified as Direct Link (DL) users and Relay Link (RL) users according to their channel conditions. After classification, both DL and RL users may coexist in the system, and Zero-Forcing (ZF) preceding is employed at both the BS and the relay for interference cancellation. Analysis and simulation results show that the proposed relaying scheme can effectively combat the large scale fading of the channels and provide significant performance gain compared with the conventional MIMO relaying schemes without user classification.