Frequency-packed Faster-than-Nyquist Signaling via Symbol-level Precoding for Multi-user MISO Redundant Transmissions

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel symbol-level precoding method for frequency-packed FTN signaling in multi-user MISO systems, enhancing spectral efficiency and robustness against interference without complex demodulation.

Contribution

It introduces space-time-frequency symbol-level precoders that manage interblock interference and handle channels with long delay spreads, outperforming traditional zero-forcing methods.

Findings

Proposed precoders outperform zero-forcing in simulations.

Achieves a balance between spectral and energy efficiency.

Handles channels with delay spread longer than symbol duration.

Abstract

This work addresses the issue of interference generated by co-channel users in downlink multi-antenna multicarrier systems with frequency-packed faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling. The resulting interference stems from an aggressive strategy for enhancing the throughput via frequency reuse across different users and the squeezing of signals in the time-frequency plane beyond the Nyquist limit. The error-free spectral efficiency is proved to be increasing with the frequency packing and FTN acceleration factors. The lower bound for the FTN sampling period that guarantees information losslesness is derived as a function of the transmitting-filter roll-off factor, the frequency-packing factor, and the number of subcarriers. Space-time-frequency symbol-level precoders (SLPs) that trade off constructive and destructive interblock interference (IBI) at the single-antenna user terminals are proposed. Redundant elements are added as guard interval to cope with vestigial destructive IBI effects. The proposals can handle channels with delay spread longer than the multicarrier-symbol duration. The receiver architecture is simple, for it does not require digital multicarrier demodulation. Simulations indicate that the proposed SLP outperforms zero-forcing precoding and achieves a target balance between spectral and energy efficiencies by controlling the amount of added redundancy from zero (full IBI) to half (destructive IBI-free) the group delay of the equivalent channel.