Distributed Digital and Hybrid Beamforming Schemes With MMSE-SIC Receivers for the MIMO Interference Channel

This paper addresses the problem of weighted sum-rate maximization and mean squared error (MSE) minimization for the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel. Specifically, we consider a weighted minimum MSE architecture where each receiver employs successive interference cancellation (SIC) to separate the various received data streams and derive a hybrid beamforming scheme, where the transmitters operate with a number of radio frequency chains smaller than the number of antennas, particularly suited for millimeter-wave channels and 5G applications. To derive our proposed schemes, we first study the relationship between sum-rate maximization and weighted MSE minimization when using SIC receivers, assuming fully digital beamforming. Next, we consider the important-and, as it turns out, highly non-trivial-case where the transmitters employ hybrid digital/analog beamforming, developing a distributed joint hybrid precoding and SIC-based combining algorithm. Moreover, for practical implementation, we propose a signaling scheme that utilizes a common broadcast channel and facilitates the acquisition of channel state information, assuming minimal assistance from a central node such as a cellular base station. Numerical results show that both the proposed weighted MMSE-SIC schemes exhibit great advantages with respect to their linear counterparts in terms of complexity, feedback information, and performance.