Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Downlink Multiuser MIMO: Precoder Optimization and PHY-Layer Design

TL;DR

This paper extends Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA) to multi-antenna receivers in downlink multi-user MIMO systems, optimizing precoders to enhance sum-rate and robustness under imperfect channel knowledge.

Contribution

It introduces a novel RSMA framework for MIMO systems, formulates a precoder optimization problem, and demonstrates improved performance over traditional schemes with multiple common streams.

Findings

RSMA achieves higher sum-DoF with more common streams.

RSMA outperforms MU-MIMO and NOMA under imperfect CSIT.

Numerical results confirm robustness and sum-rate gains of RSMA.

Abstract

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA) has recently appeared as a powerful and robust multiple access and interference management strategy for downlink Multi-user (MU) multi-antenna communications. In this work, we study the precoder design problem for RSMA scheme in downlink MU systems with both perfect and imperfect Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT) and assess the role and benefits of transmitting multiple common streams. Unlike existing works which have considered single-antenna receivers (Multiple-Input Single-Output--MISO), we propose and extend the RSMA framework for multi-antenna receivers (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output--MIMO) and formulate the precoder optimization problem with the aim of maximizing the Weighted Ergodic Sum-Rate (WESR). Precoder optimization is solved using Sample Average Approximation (SAA) together with the proposed vectorization and Weighted Minimum Mean Square Error (WMMSE) based approach. Achievable sum-Degree of Freedom (DoF) of RSMA is derived for the proposed framework as an increasing function of the number of transmitted common and private streams, which is further validated by the Ergodic Sum Rate (ESR) performance using Monte Carlo simulations. Conventional MU-MIMO based on linear precoders and Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) schemes are considered as baselines. Numerical results show that with imperfect CSIT, the sum-DoF and ESR performance of RSMA is superior than that of the two baselines, and is increasing with the number of transmitted common streams. Moreover, by better managing the interference, RSMA not only has significant ESR gains over baseline schemes but is more robust to CSIT inaccuracies, network loads and user deployments.