Vector Precoding for Gaussian MIMO Broadcast Channels: Impact of Replica Symmetry Breaking

TL;DR

This paper employs the replica method to analyze vector precoding in Gaussian MIMO broadcast channels, revealing the impact of replica symmetry breaking on energy penalty and spectral efficiency, with significant gains over traditional methods.

Contribution

It introduces a replica symmetry breaking analysis for vector precoding, providing new insights into energy penalty and spectral efficiency in MIMO broadcast channels.

Findings

Replica symmetry breaking affects energy penalty calculations.

Discrete lattice-based relaxations outperform convex relaxations at high SNR.

Lattice and convex relaxations outperform linear ZF and THP in spectral efficiency.

Abstract

The so-called "replica method" of statistical physics is employed for the large system analysis of vector precoding for the Gaussian multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast channel. The transmitter is assumed to comprise a linear front-end combined with nonlinear precoding, that minimizes the front-end imposed transmit energy penalty. Focusing on discrete complex input alphabets, the energy penalty is minimized by relaxing the input alphabet to a larger alphabet set prior to precoding. For the common discrete lattice-based relaxation, the problem is found to violate the assumption of replica symmetry and a replica symmetry breaking ansatz is taken. The limiting empirical distribution of the precoder's output, as well as the limiting energy penalty, are derived for one-step replica symmetry breaking. For convex relaxations, replica symmetry is found to hold and corresponding results are obtained for comparison. Particularizing to a "zero-forcing" (ZF) linear front-end, and non-cooperative users, a decoupling result is derived according to which the channel observed by each of the individual receivers can be effectively characterized by the Markov chain u-x-y, where u, x, and y are the channel input, the equivalent precoder output, and the channel output, respectively. For discrete lattice-based alphabet relaxation, the impact of replica symmetry breaking is demonstrated for the energy penalty at the transmitter. An analysis of spectral efficiency is provided to compare discrete lattice-based relaxations against convex relaxations, as well as linear ZF and Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP). Focusing on quaternary phase shift-keying (QPSK), significant performance gains of both lattice and convex relaxations are revealed compared to linear ZF precoding, for medium to high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). THP is shown to be outperformed as well.