Partial Zero-Forcing for Multi-Way Relay Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a partial zero-forcing beamforming method for MIMO relay networks that improves spectral efficiency by balancing interference cancellation and signal enhancement, leading to higher sum-rates.

Contribution

It proposes a novel PZF beamforming technique for MWRNs that relaxes interference constraints, enhancing network performance over existing methods.

Findings

PZF outperforms existing linear beamforming in sum-rate.

Simulation confirms significant sum-rate improvements.

PZF effectively balances interference cancellation and signal strength.

Abstract

The ever increasing demands for mobile network access have resulted in a significant increase in bandwidth usage. By improving the system spectral efficiency, multi-way relay networks (MWRNs) provide promising approaches to address this challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel linear beamforming design, namely partial zero-forcing (PZF), for MWRNs with a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) relay. Compared to zero-forcing (ZF), PZF relaxes the constraints on the relay beamforming matrix such that only partial user-interference, instead of all, is canceled at the relay. The users eliminate the remaining interferences through self-interference and successive interference cancellation. A sum-rate maximization problem is formulated and solved to exploit the extra degrees-of-freedom resulted from PZF. Simulation results show that the proposed PZF relay beamforming design achieves significantly higher network sum-rates than the existing linear beamforming designs.