IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO.
10, OCTOBER 2009
Precoder Design for
Non-Regenerative MIMO Relay Systems
Ronghong Mo, Member, IEEE, and Yong Huat Chew, Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper studies the precoder design for a 3-
node non-generative MIMO relay channel, taking the direct link
transmission into consideration. We first look into the scenario
where precoding is only performed at the relay. Our analytical
approach enables a relay precoding design to achieve better
ergodic capacity than the precoding design to achieve a lower
bound of the capacity reported in earlier works. We next propose
an iterative algorithm to perform joint precoding design at both
the source and the relay. To reduce the computation complexity
of the iterative algorithm, a two-step algorithm is then developed.
Our numerical results show that under some circumstances,
capacity gain can be achieved by performing precoding at both
the source and the relay compared to the case where precoding
is performed at the relay only. The efficiency of the proposed
two-step algorithm is verified since it achieves roughly identical
capacity as the iterative joint precoding scheme.
Index Terms—MIMO relay, precoder design, amplify-and-
forward, ergodic capacity, relay link, direct link.
I. I NTRODUCTION
F UTURE wireless networks are expected to provide ubiq-
uitous high data rate coverage with reduced infrastructure
cost in dense environment. Multihop transmission technique,
which uses intermediate relays to aid the signal transmission
from the source to the destination without increasing the signal
transmission power, has emerged as an essential technique to
meet this ambitious requirement [1]. In multihop transmission
systems, in one way, the interference caused by the source
signals to other co-channel signals could be suppressed by
transmitting at lower power level without sacrificing received
signal quality. Therefore power efficiency is enhanced. On
the other hand, possible detrimental shadowing effects present
when the source signals propagate to the destination can be
mitigated by re-transmitting the signals at the relay. As a
result, with the help of relays, the source is able to transmit
signals to destination possibly out of its communication range.
The study on multihop transmission dated back to 1970’s,
when a 3-node relay channel was first introduced in [2] and
further studied in [3]. The information capacity of a degraded
relay channel, the upper and lower bounds of a general relay
channel were investigated in [4]. More recently, a considerable
amount of research efforts have been carried out to examine
relay networks under various settings. Depending on how the
relays process the received signals, various relaying strategies
Manuscript received June 27, 2007; revised March 3, 2008, June 6, 2008,
August 25, 2008, December 28, 2008, and May 6, 2009; accepted June 26,
2009. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving
it for publication was H. Ochiai.
The authors are with the Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore (e-
mail: {chewyh, rmo}@i2r.a-star.edu.sg).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2009.070703
1536-1276/09$25.00 ⃝
c 2009 IEEE
5041
have been investigated, among which, the decode-and-forward
(DF) and the amplify-and-forward (AF) [5][6] strategies have
received extensive attention. When DF is used, the relay
first decodes the received signals and then re-encodes them
for transmission to the destination. When AF is used, the
relay simply amplifies the received signals to overcome the
power loss and forwards them to the destination subsequently.
Although with AF strategy, the noise is amplified together with
the desired signal, spatial diversity gain can be achieved since
the destination can receive desired signals transmitted from
both the source and the relay. In general, AF needs less signal
processing at the relay and thus is less complex. In addition
to the relaying strategies, based on the usage of resource
(frequency bands, time slots) by the relay for transmission
and reception, relay networks can work in either a full-duplex
or a half-duplex mode [7][8]. In the full-duplex mode, the
relay is allowed to transmit and receive simultaneously over
the same frequency band. In the half duplex mode, the relay
transmits and receives concurrently over orthogonal channels.
This paper focuses on the precoding design for a relay network
employing AF relaying and half duplex mode.
The multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) transmission
technology is well known to improve the spectral efficiency
by transmitting multiple data streams across multiple antennas.
The capacity analysis of MIMO systems has been well doc-
umented in [9][10]. Multiple antennas can be installed at the
source (S), relay (R) and destination (D) to form a MIMO
relay network, with the capability to enhance the spectral
efficiency as well as to overcome the coverage outage. The
underlying infrastructures of MIMO relay networks under
investigations vary with the applications [11]-[17]. When more
than one relay with single antenna is available, a virtual MIMO
relay system could be formed using some kinds of cooperation
among the nodes [18].
When the channel state information (CSI) is available to
all the nodes in a MIMO relay network, the covariance
matrix of the signals transmitted from the antennas of S and
R, or equivalently the source and relay precoding matrices
can be optimally designed based on the CSI to maximize
the performance measures, e.g., the instantaneous information
rates. The precoding designs to maximize the information rates
of a MIMO relay channel with CSI only available at R and D,
were studied in [11]-[14]. When CSI is known to all nodes,
joint precoding design at S and R under their respective power
constraints were studied in [15][16], and in [17]. However,
all these precoding schemes were derived by neglecting the
signals transmitted directly from S to D, except the study in
[15] which considers a full-duplex relay operation mode and
a DF relaying processing.
5042 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2009

As pointed out earlier, the direct signal transmission from S Relay

Precoder
to D provides a spatial copy of the source signals. Obviously n1
a2 H 2
the joint consideration of the direct link (DL) and the relay a1 H 1
n2
link (RL) transmission is able to give incremental performance F

gain by employing diversity combining. This paper considers Source y1

the precoding design taking into account the DL when CSI Precoder
Relay
is available for a half-duplex relay network. We first derive n0
y0
a relay only precoding design for a MIMO relay channel G
a0 H 0
assuming a uniform power allocation across the antennas of
S (i.e., the source precoding matrix G satisfies GG𝐻 = I), Source
which includes the study in [11] as a special case. We then
propose an iterative algorithm to obtain the precoding design Destination

at both S and R. A two-step algorithm as an alternative to

the proposed iterative algorithm to reduce the computation Fig. 1. A 3-node relay system.
complexity is also presented. The work presented in this paper
can be viewed as one step further of the work in [11][16].
respectively represent the path loss when signals propagate
This paper is organized as follows. The system and the
from S to D, S to R, and R to D. The terms n0 , n1 and n2
channel models are described in Section II. In Section III, the
denote the 𝐿×1, 𝑁 ×1, 𝐿×1 AWGN vectors at D for the signal
relay only precoder (ROP) design is first derived. An iterative
received from S, at R for the signal received from S, and at
algorithm is then presented to obtain the joint source and relay
D for the signal received from R. Their respective covariance
precoder (JSRP-I) design. Finally a two-step joint source and
matrices are given by 𝐸[n0 n𝐻 2 𝐻 2
0 ] = 𝜎0 I𝐿 , 𝐸[n1 n1 ] = 𝜎1 I𝑁
relay precoder (JSRP-2) algorithm is proposed to reduce the 𝐻 2
and 𝐸[n2 n2 ] = 𝜎2 I𝐿 .
complexity of the iterative algorithm. The numerical results
With the AF relaying strategy, R receives signals transmitted
to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms are
from S and simply retransmits these signals to D. The relay
presented in Section IV, followed by conclusion.
precoding matrix F is then of size 𝑁 × 𝑁 , while the source
For a matrix Ψ, we use 𝑡𝑟{Ψ}, ∣Ψ∣, Ψℋ and Ψ+ to rep-
precoding matrix G is of size 𝑀 ×𝑃 . Define a 𝑀 ×𝑀 matrix
resent its trace, determinant, Hermitian transpose and pseudo-
G̃ = GGℋ , which indeed describes the power allocation
inverse, respectively. Any matrix Ψ can be singular value
ℋ among the transmit antennas of S. Assume y = [y0𝑇 y1𝑇 ]𝑇
decomposed (SVD), i.e., Ψ = UΨ ΣΨ VΨ , where UΨ and
(for simplicity, we use the notation [y0 ; y1 ]), the mutual
VΨ are unitary matrices and ΣΨ is a matrix with non-negative
information of the 3-node MIMO relay channel is given as
values arranged in non-increasing order on the main diagonal
and zeros off the main diagonal. 𝐼(x; y) = ℎ(y∣H0 , H1 , H2 ) − ℎ(y∣x, H0 , H1 , H2 ) (3)
where ℎ(⋅) denotes the entropy.
II. S YSTEM AND C HANNEL M ODEL
Based on (1) to (3) and the derivation given in [[11], eq.(8)],
Consider a 3-node MIMO relay, where multiple antennas since the effect of source precoding can be included in the
are equipped at the source S, the relay R and the destination channel matrices, i.e., by replacing H0 and H1 with H0 G
D, as shown in Fig. 1. The number of antennas installed at S, and H1 G, respectively, the instantaneous information rate can
R and D is 𝑀 , 𝑁 and 𝐿, respectively. A number of 𝑃 multiple be obtained as
independent data streams are transmitted simultaneously from  [

S to D. It is assumed that the MIMO channels experience flat I(x; y) = log2 I + G̃ 𝜌0 Hℋ ℋ
0 H 0 + 𝜌1 H 1 H 1 −
fading with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The relay [ 2 2 −2 ]−1 ]

𝜌1 H ℋ ℋ
1 𝑎2 𝜎1 𝜎2 (H2 F) H2 F + I H1  (4)
is further assumed to employ the AF relaying strategy and the
half duplex operation mode.
where 𝜌0 = 𝑎20 𝜎𝑠2 𝜎0−2 and 𝜌1 = 𝑎21 𝜎𝑠2 𝜎1−2 denote the average
Refer to Fig. 1, the respective 𝐿 × 1 received signal vectors
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the signal received at D directly
at D from the direct link (DL) and the relay link (RL) are
from S, and that received at R from S, respectively. After some
given by
manipulations, (4) could be further written as
y0 = 𝑎0 H0 Gx + n0 (1)    
   
I(x; y) = log2 I + 𝜌0 G̃Hℋ 0 H 0  + log 2 I + 𝜌 H
1 3 3H ℋ
W̃ ,
y1 = 𝑎2 H2 F(𝑎1 H1 Gx + n1 ) + n2 , (2)
(5)
where x is a 𝑃 × 1 zero mean circularly symmetric complex where
Gaussian source input signal vector. Its covariance matrix is [ ]− 12 1
given as E[xx𝐻 ] = 𝜎𝑠2 I𝑝 = (𝑝𝑡 /𝑀 )I𝑝 , where 𝑝𝑡 is the total H3 = H1 I + 𝜌0 G̃Hℋ 0 H 0 G̃ 2 (6)
transmission power over multiple antennas at S. It has been [ 2 2 −2 ] −1
W̃ = I − 𝑎2 𝜎1 𝜎2 (H2 F)ℋ H2 F + I (7)
shown in [4] and [10] that the optimal distribution of input
signal to achieve the capacity of a relay channel corrupted are a 𝑁 × 𝑀 and a 𝑁 × 𝑁 matrix, respectively.
by Gaussian noise is Gaussian. H0 , H1 and H2 denote the Applying singular value decomposition (SVD) to H2 F and
ℋ
𝐿 × 𝑀, 𝑁 × 𝑀, 𝐿 × 𝑁 MIMO channel matrices between denote H2 F = U𝐻𝐹 Σ𝐻𝐹 V𝐻𝐹 , we have (H2 F)ℋ H2 F=
S to D, S to R, and R to D, respectively. a0 , a1 and a2 V𝐻𝐹 Λ𝐻𝐹 V𝐻𝐹 , where Λ𝐻𝐹 = Σℋ
ℋ
𝐻𝐹 Σ𝐻𝐹 is a diagonal
MO and CHEW: PRECODER DESIGN FOR NON-REGENERATIVE MIMO RELAY SYSTEMS 5043

matrix with non-negative elements and V𝐻𝐹 is a unitary and arranged in non-increasing order. With this decomposition
matrix. From (7), it is not difficult to show that and define a 𝑁 × 𝑁 diagonal matrix Λ𝐻3 = Σ𝐻3 Σℋ 𝐻3 =
[ ]−1 ℋ (1) (𝑁 )
𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑔(𝜆𝐻3 , ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ , 𝜆𝐻3 ), the second term of (5) can be written
W̃ = I − V𝐻𝐹 𝑎22 𝜎12 𝜎2−2 Λ𝐻𝐹 + I V𝐻𝐹
[ ]−1 ℋ as
= V𝐻𝐹 𝑎22 𝜎12 𝜎2−2 Λ𝐻𝐹 𝑎22 𝜎12 𝜎2−2 Λ𝐻𝐹 + I V𝐻𝐹  
 
𝐶𝑅 = log2 I + 𝜌1 Λ𝐻3 Uℋ 𝐻3 W̃U𝐻3 
Since 𝑎22 𝜎12 𝜎2−2 Λ𝐻𝐹 [𝑎22 𝜎12 𝜎2−2 Λ𝐻𝐹 + I]−1 is a diagonal ma-  
 1
ℋ 2 
1
trix with non-negative elements, we thus conclude that W̃ is = log2 I + 𝜌1 Λ𝐻 2
3
U𝐻3 W̃U 𝐻3 Λ 𝐻3  (10)
positive semi-definite.
We further assume individual power constraints at S and R, In (10), since W̃ is a positive semi-definite matrix, fol-
mathematically, this is equivalent to lowing Cholesky decomposition, there exists a matrix Ψ
1 1
{ } satisfying W̃ = Ψℋ Ψ. Hence Λ𝐻 2
Uℋ
𝐻3 W̃U𝐻3 Λ𝐻3 could
2

𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 G̃ ≤ 𝑝𝑡 (8) 3
1 1
{ 2 2 ℋ 2 ℋ
} be rewritten in a form of (ΨU𝐻3 Λ𝐻
2
)ℋ ΨU𝐻3 Λ𝐻
2
, which
𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠 𝑎1 (FH1 ) FH1 G̃ + 𝜎1 F F ≤ 𝑝𝑟 (9) 1
3
1
3

indicates that (ΨU𝐻3 Λ𝐻

2
3
)ℋ ΨU𝐻3 Λ𝐻
2
3
is positive semi-
where 𝑝𝑟 is the total transmission power over multiple transmit definite. Consequently I+𝜌1 Λ𝐻
1
Uℋ
1

𝐻3 W̃U𝐻3 Λ𝐻3 is certainly

2 2

antennas at R. Note that, in deriving (4) to (9), we have made 3

a positive definite matrix since 𝜌1 is non-negative. Following
use
 of the property
  that, for any two matrices Ψ𝐴 and Ψ𝐵 , the Hadamard’s inequality which states that, for any positive
I+Ψ𝐴 Ψ𝐵  = I+Ψ𝐵 Ψ𝐴  and 𝑡𝑟{Ψ𝐴 Ψ𝐵 } = 𝑡𝑟{Ψ𝐵 Ψ𝐴 }. ∏
definite matrix Z, we have ∣Z∣ ≤ 𝑖 𝑍𝑖,𝑖 , where 𝑍𝑖,𝑖 denotes
It can be seen from (5) to (9) that, the instantaneous the (𝑖, 𝑖)𝑡ℎ entry of Z, and the equality holds if and only if
information rate and power constraints directly depend on Z is diagonal [20], the information rate given in (10) is then
the source input covariance matrix G̃ (instead of the source upbounded by
precoding matrix G) and the relay precoding matrix F.
However, jointly optimizing (5) with respect to G̃ and F under 𝑁
∑  
 (𝑖) 
the power constraints (8) and (9) is in general not a convex 𝐶𝑅 = log2 1 + 𝜌1 𝜆𝐻3 𝑑(𝑖)  (11)
𝑖=1
problem, as shown in [16] for negligible DL transmission.
where
III. P RECODING D ESIGN D = Uℋ
𝐻3 W̃U𝐻3 (12)
The study in [11] considered the design of F, when the DL is a diagonal matrix with non-negative entries, i.e., D =
transmission is neglected. A number of 𝑃 = 𝑀 data streams 𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑔[𝑑(1) , . . . , 𝑑(𝑁 ) ]. It is easy to show that (11) is a concave
(𝑖)
are transmitted and an identity matrix G̃ = I is assumed as function of D. In (11), 𝜆𝐻3 for 𝑖 = 1, ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ , 𝑁 does not depend
the source input covariance matrix. However, the precoding on F, while 𝑑(𝑖) for 𝑖 = 1, ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ , 𝑁 is related to F by (7) and
design of F to maximize the information rates when the DL (12). Referred to (9), the relay power constraint imposes re-
is non-negligible was not investigated, instead only the design striction on F and thus D. The optimization problem becomes
of F to achieve the upper and lower bounds were given. To to maximize the information rate (11) under the constraint on
this end, this section considers the design of G̃ and F which D, which will be derived in the following.
maximize the information rate (4) (or (5)) under the constraints Substituting (7) into (12), we have
(8) and (9), under the consideration of DL transmission. [ [ 2 2 −2 ]−1 ]
D = Uℋ 𝐻3 I − 𝑎2 𝜎1 𝜎2 (H2 F) H2 F + I
ℋ
U𝐻3 (13)
A. Relay only Precoding (ROP) Scheme Pre-multiplying both sides of (13) by U𝐻3 followed by post-
Assume that CSI is not available at S. In a point-to- multiplying by Uℋ𝐻3 , respectively, and making use of the fact
point MIMO channel, when the channel information is not that U𝐻3 is unitary, we have
available at the transmitter, it has already been shown that the 𝑎22 𝜎12 𝜎2−2 (H2 F)ℋ H2 F + I = [I − U𝐻3 DUℋ −1
𝐻3 ]
uniform power allocation over transmit antennas achieves the
ergodic capacity [19]. When the MIMO relay channel given = [U𝐻3 (I − D)Uℋ𝐻3 ]
−1
= U𝐻3 (I − D)−1 Uℋ
𝐻3
in (1) and (2) is concerned, if H̃ = [𝑎0 H0 ; 𝑎2 H2 F𝑎1 H1 ] ℋ 𝜎22 [ −1
] ℋ
⇒ (H2 F) H2 F = 2 2 U𝐻3 (I − D) − I U𝐻3 (14)
and ñ = [n0 ; 𝑎2 H2 Fn1 + n2 ] are assumed, the channel 𝑎2 𝜎1
input-output relationship can be written in the form of y =
By performing SVD, Hℋ ℋ
2 H2 = V𝐻2 Λ𝐻2 V𝐻2 , where V𝐻2
H̃Gx + ñ, which is exactly the input-output relationship of a
and Λ𝐻2 are 𝑁 × 𝑁 unitary matrix and diagonal matrix
point-to-point MIMO channel. Like the point-to-point MIMO
respectively, the general solution to F can be expressed as
channels, therefore, if H̃ is not available at S, the uniform
𝜎2 [ 12 ]+ [ ] 12 ℋ
power allocation is optimal and given by (𝑝𝑡 /𝑀 )I𝑀 , which F= V𝐻2 Λ𝐻 X (I − D) −1
− I U𝐻3 (15)
is equivalent to assuming G̃ = I𝑀 . 𝑎2 𝜎1 2

Based on (5) to (7), it can be seen that only the second
term of (5) depends on F. It is thus sufficient to find F which
maximizes the second term of (5).
ℋ
Performing SVD on H3 , H3 = U𝐻3 Σ𝐻3 V𝐻 3
, where U𝐻3
and V𝐻3 are 𝑁 ×𝑁 , 𝑀 ×𝑀 unitary matrix, respectively. Σ𝐻3
is a 𝑁 × 𝑀 matrix with non-negative entries in the diagonal
where X is an arbitrary 𝑁 ×𝑁 unitary matrix. We use pseudo-
inverse of Λ𝐻2 since Λ𝐻2 might not be a full rank matrix (i.e.,
for 𝑁 = 4, 𝐿 = 2, Λ𝐻2 has a rank of 2). Compare (15) with
the precoding design in [11], it can be seen that under the
consideration of DL transmission, the relay precoding matrix
F is associated with U𝐻3 rather than U𝐻1 as in [11].
5044 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2009

So far an explicit expression for F as a function of D and which is similar to the one reported in [11]. Furthermore, if
X is obtained. Although X does not appear in the information the DL transmission is not considered, Uℋ ℋ
𝐻3 = U𝐻1 , (19) is
rate defined in (11), it affects the power distribution among exactly the relay precoding matrix derived in [[11], eq.(17)].
antennas through influencing F and thus the information rate. Hence, for negligible DL (𝑎0 = 0), we can conclude that the
Apply (15) to (9), the power constraint at R is expressed as relay precoding design in [11] is a special case (X = I) of the
{[ ]1 optimization problem (11), under the power constraint (17).
𝑡𝑟 (I − D)−1 − I 2 Uℋ 2 2 2 ℋ
𝐻3 (𝜎1 I + 𝜎𝑠 𝑎1 H1 H1 )U𝐻3 Given (19), the power constraint (16) at the relay can now
[ ] 1 } be expressed as
(I − D)−1 − I 2 Xℋ Λ+ 2 2 −2
𝐻2 X ≤ 𝑎2 𝜎1 𝜎2 𝑝𝑟 (16)
{
Equation (16) indeed represents the constraint on D given 𝑡𝑟 Uℋ (𝜎 2 I + 𝜎 2 𝑎2 H1 Hℋ )U𝐻3
[𝐻3 1 −1 𝑠 1] + 1}
a unitary matrix X. The optimization problem has now been (I − D) − I Λ𝐻2 ≤ 𝑎22 𝜎12 𝜎2−2 𝑝𝑟 (20)
formulated as finding a diagonal matrix D and a unitary matrix
X which jointly maximize (11), instead of finding an arbitrary Denote Λ+
𝐻2 = 𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑔(
1
(1) ,⋅⋅⋅ , 1
(𝑁 ) ), 𝜷 = Uℋ ℋ
𝐻3 H1 H1 U𝐻3
𝜆𝐻 𝜆𝐻
2 2
matrix F which spans over a much larger space. However due and 𝛽𝑖𝑖 is the (𝑖, 𝑖)𝑡ℎ entry of the matrix 𝜷, (20) can be further
to the fact that the unitary matrix constraint XXℋ = I is written as,
not linear, the optimization problem with respect to D and X ∑ (𝜎 2 𝑎2 𝛽𝑖𝑖 + 𝜎 2 )𝑑(𝑖)
𝑠 1 1
is generally non-convex [21], although the objective function
(𝑖)
≤ 𝑎22 𝜎12 𝜎2−2 𝑝𝑟 (21)
𝜆𝐻2 (1 − 𝑑 )(𝑖)
(11) is concave. 𝑖
An exhaustive search over the space of unitary matrix has to /[ 𝜎2 𝑎2 𝛽𝑖𝑖 +𝜎2 ]
be used to find the optimal X, since X could be any unitary Set 𝑑𝑖 = 𝑑˜(𝑖) 𝑠 1
(𝑖)
1
+ 𝑑˜(𝑖) , the objective function (11)
𝜆𝐻
2
matrix. The unitary matrix X could be randomly generated is now reformulated as
following the method in [22]. Given a particular unitary matrix [ /( )]
𝜌1 𝜆𝐻3 𝑑˜(𝑖)
(𝑖)
∑ 𝜌1 𝛽𝑖𝑖 + 1 𝑑˜(𝑖)
X, D could be obtained by solving the optimization problem 𝐶𝑅 = log2 1 + + 2
(11) under the constraint (16). The optimal solution is the 𝑖
𝜎12 (𝑖)
𝜆𝐻2 𝜎1
(X, D) which gives the highest information rate. (22)
Alternatively, we can modify constraint (16) to consider the subject to the constraint
average relay power with respect to X which is modeled as a ∑
𝑑˜(𝑖) ≤ 𝑁 𝜌2 𝜎12 (23)
random unitary matrix [22]. Mathematically, the average relay
𝑖
power constraint can be reformulated as
𝑑˜(𝑖) ≥ 0, ∀𝑖 (24)
{[ ]1
𝑡𝑟 (I − D)−1 − I 2 Uℋ 2 2 2 ℋ
𝐻3 (𝜎1 I + 𝜎𝑠 𝑎1 H1 H1 )U𝐻3 𝑎22 𝑝𝑟
[ ]1 } where 𝜌2 = 𝑁 𝜎22
is indeed the average power for the signal
(I − D)−1 − I 2 𝐸[Xℋ Λ+ 2 2 −2
𝐻2 X] ≤ 𝑎2 𝜎1 𝜎2 𝑝𝑟 (17) received at the destination from the relay. The constraint (24)
is used to maintain a non-negative transmission power for each
With the expectation 𝐸[Xℋ Λ+ 𝐻2 X], X is removed from the transmitted signal at the relay.
relay power constraint and we only need to find a D to
It could be verified that the Hessian of 𝐶𝑅 , with respect to
maximize (11).
𝑑˜(𝑖) (for 𝑖 = 1, . . . , 𝑁 ), is negative definite, i.e., ∇2 𝐶𝑅 ≺ 0.
However, the computation of 𝐸[Xℋ Λ+ 𝐻2 X] is not straight- Hence (22) is a concave function of 𝑑˜(𝑖) , while the constraint
forward. Since it involves complicated parameterization meth-
(23) is a convex function of 𝑑˜(𝑖) . The problem can be easily
ods to characterize the unitary matrix and the distributions of
transformed to a standard convex optimization problem. Using
multiple associated parameters used for the characterization
Lagrangian optimization technique, 𝑑˜(𝑖) could be obtained as:
[22], in general, a closed form expression for the expectation { [
is unlikely to exist. To obtain this expectation, simulations can ˜(𝑖) 1
𝑑 = max 0, − (2𝜇𝑖 + 𝛾𝑖 𝜇𝑖 ) +
be conducted, where unitary matrices are randomly generated 2(1 + 𝛾𝑖 )
√ ]}
given the parameterization methods and 𝐸[Xℋ Λ+ 𝐻2 X] is then 2 𝛾 𝑖 𝜇𝑖
2
(2𝜇𝑖 + 𝛾𝑖 𝜇𝑖 ) − 4(1 + 𝛾𝑖 )(𝜇𝑖 − ) (25)
obtained as the sample mean of Xℋ Λ+ 𝐻2 X. 𝜍 ln 2
Both the search algorithm and the algorithm using average
relay power constraint are not trivial. To this end, here we where
(𝑖)
propose to use a suboptimal X, e.g., a particular class of 𝛾𝑖 = 𝜌1 𝜆𝐻3 (26)
unitary matrix which is a diagonal matrix with norm one / (𝑖)
𝜇𝑖 = 𝜎12 (𝜌1 𝛽𝑖𝑖 + 1) 𝜆𝐻2 (27)
elements, given as
The parameter 𝜍 appearing in (25) can be obtained by substi-
X = 𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑔[𝑒𝑗𝜃1 , ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ , 𝑒𝑗𝜃𝑁 ] (18)
tuting (25) to (23) and solving the equation numerically.
where 𝜃𝑖 is a phase variable with 0 ≤ 𝜃𝑖 ≤ 2𝜋. As shown in After obtaining 𝑑˜(𝑖) and thus D, the precoding matrix F
the following, the choice of (18) leads to a simple optimization could then be obtained from (15) with X given in (18).
problem of finding D. Furthermore if we select 𝜃1 = ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ = When the DL is negligible, H3 = H1 . Assume SVD of
ℋ
𝜃𝑁 = 0 (or X = I) and define a diagonal matrix Λ𝐹 = H1 = U𝐻1 Σ𝐻1 V𝐻 and Λ𝐻1 = Σ𝐻1 Σℋ 𝐻1 , then 𝜷 = Λ𝐻1 .
𝜎2
[ 12 ]+ 1
1
Equations (22) and (23) are reduced to the objective function
𝑎2 𝜎1 Λ𝐻2 [(I−D)−1 −I] 2 , the precoding matrix F becomes
and the relay power constraint given in [11], after performing
F = V𝐻2 Λ𝐹 Uℋ
𝐻3 (19) the transformation 𝑥𝑖 = 𝑑˜(𝑖) /𝜎12 and 𝐿 = 𝑁 , where 𝐿 is the
MO and CHEW: PRECODER DESIGN FOR NON-REGENERATIVE MIMO RELAY SYSTEMS 5045

number of transmit antennas at R (denoted by 𝑁 in our paper). is a Hermitian matrix.

Moreover, if we substitute D into (20), the relay precoding Since the objective function (28) is concave in G̃ and all
matrix F is exactly the as that of [11]. Hence our study the constraints are convex sets of G̃, (28) to (31) form a
includes the study in [11] as a special case. convex optimization problem. As shown in the Appendix,
However, it is worthwhile to differentiate our approach and unlike the point-to-point MIMO optimization problem which
the study presented in [11]. In [11], the authors obtained has objective function (28) and constraints (29) and (31) [10],
an equivalent form [[11], eq.(20)] of the objective function the optimal G̃ of the above addressed problem no longer
[[11], eq.(13)] by using some properties of matrix determi- diagonalizes A, due to the presence of relay power constraint
nant, and transformed the constraint [[11], eq.(4)] into an (30). We are unable to obtain a closed form solution for the
equivalent form accordingly. In our approach, we start from optimal G̃. Moreover, numerical methods to solve convex
the Hadamard’s inequality and find out the upbound of the optimization problems, such as the interior-point method and
instantaneous information rate given in (11). The optimization the sub-gradient projection method, have high complexity and
problem turns out to finding a diagonal matrix D and a unitary are time-consuming especially with a large number of design
matrix X to maximize (11). parameters and constraints. Alternatively, here we consider a
particular structure of G̃ which diagonalizes A, similar to the
B. Iterative joint source and relay precoding (JSRP-I) design case of point-to-point MIMO. As seen in the following, under
In Section III.A, we do not consider the design of the input this assumption, the optimization problem can be scalarized
covariance matrix G̃ at S. When CSI is also available at S, and simplified although the solution is sub-optimal. The ca-
we would investigate how this information could also be used pacity loss caused by the use of this particular form of matrix
to design G̃ to further enhance the spectral efficiency. G̃ will be investigated in Section IV by simulations.
ℋ
A joint source and relay procoding design with negligible Assume SVD A = V𝐴 Λ𝐴 V𝐴 , where V𝐴 is a unitary
(𝑖)
DL transmission was studied in [16]. In the presence of DL, matrix and Λ𝐴 is a diagonal matrix with entries 𝜆𝐴 (for
solving the joint optimization problem becomes more difficult 𝑖 = 1, . . . , 𝑀 ) arranged in non-decreasing order. Equation
due to the intertwining of the designed parameters G̃ and (28) could be further written as
F. This can be seen from the following: the relay precoding  
 
matrix given in (15) is related to the SVD of H3 defined in (6), 𝐼(x; y∣G̃) = log2 I + Λ𝐴 V𝐴 G̃V𝐴 
 ℋ
(33)
which involves the inversion of the unknown source covariance
matrix G̃. Furthermore, the instantaneous information rate (4) ℋ ˜
To diagonalize A, V𝐴 G̃V𝐴 = D𝐺 should be a diagonal
in general is not a convex function of G̃ and F. However, we ˜ ˜ ˜
notice that, given G̃, (4) is a concave function of F when X matrix, i.e., D = 𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑔[𝑑1 , . . . , 𝑑𝐺
𝐺 𝐺
𝑀 ]. Note that this choice of
is given as (18). It can also be seen later that, given F, (4) is G̃ also maximizes (33) according to Hadamard’s inequality.
concave in G̃. With these observations, we propose an iterative The maximization problem (28) to (31) is re-formulated as
algorithm, JSRP-I, which uses the alternating optimization 𝑀
∑ (𝑖) ˜
(AO) method to obtain G̃ and F [23][24]. max 𝐼(x; y∣G̃) = log2 (1 + 𝜆𝐴 𝑑𝐺
𝑖 ) (34)
˜
𝐺
The essence of AO method is that, although the objective 𝑖=1
function is not convex with respect to all the design parame-
subject to constraints
ters, it is convex in subsets of the design parameters. The AO
method is to partition the design parameters into subsets, each 𝑀
∑ ˜
of which is derived in one step by fixing the other subsets, e.g., 𝜎𝑠2 𝑑𝐺
𝑖 ≤ 𝑝𝑡 (35)
in our case, G̃ and F are the two subsets derived alternatively. 𝑖=1
∑𝑀
When optimizing F, G̃ is fixed and H3 is computed from ˜
(6). The relay precoding matrix F could then be derived using 𝜎𝑠2 𝑎21 𝐵𝑖𝑖 𝑑𝐺
𝑖 ≤ 𝑝˜𝑟 (36)
the method presented in section III.A, by replacing H0 with 𝑖=1
𝐺˜
H0 G and H1 with H1 G. 𝑑𝑖 ≥ 0, ∀𝑖 (37)
When optimizing G̃ for a given F, the source covariance ℋ
matrix G̃ can be obtained by solving: where B = V𝐴 (FH1 )ℋ FH1 V𝐴 and 𝑝˜𝑟 = 𝑝𝑟 −𝑡𝑟{𝜎12 Fℋ F}.
˜
  It is easily to show that (34) is a concave function of D𝐺 . By
max 𝐼(x; y∣G̃) = log2 I + G̃A (28) applying Lagrangian optimization technique, the solution of
G̃
the above optimization problem is given as
subject to the constraints
{ } [ ]
𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 G̃ ≤ 𝑝𝑡 (29) ˜
𝐺 1 1
𝑑𝑖 = max 0, 2 − (38)
{ } { } 𝜎𝑠 (𝜇𝐺˜ + 𝜉𝐺˜ 𝑎21 𝐵𝑖𝑖 ) ln 2 𝜆(𝑖)
𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 𝑎21 FH1 G̃(FH1 )ℋ + 𝑡𝑟 𝜎12 Fℋ F ≤ 𝑝𝑟 (30) 𝐴

G̃ ર 0 (31) where 𝜇𝐺˜ and 𝜉𝐺˜ are non-negative Lagrange multipliers

associated with the source and power constraints given by (29)
where constraint (31) is to ensure that the source convariance and (30) respectively, and can be obtained by substituting (38)
matrix is positive semi-definite and into (35) and (36) and jointly solving the linear equations. The
[
A = 𝜌0 H ℋ ℋ
0 H 0 + 𝜌1 H 1 H 1 source covariance matrix G̃ is then given as
[ ]−1 ]
2 2 −2
−𝜌1 Hℋ ℋ
1 𝑎2 𝜎1 𝜎2 (H2 F) H2 F + I H1 (32) G̃ = V𝐴 D𝐺 V𝐴
ℋ ˜
(39)
5046
TABLE I
I TERATIVE ALGORITHM TO OBTAIN G̃ AND F
Initialize G̃ = I
Repeat
Compute H3 = H1 (I + 𝜌0 G̃Hℋ
0 H0 )
−2 1
G̃ 2
1
ℋ
Compute SVD: H3 = U𝐻3 Λ𝐻3 V𝐻
3
Update 𝜷: 𝜷 = Uℋ ℋ
𝐻3 H1 G̃H1 U𝐻3
Compute F using the method introduced in Section III.A
Compute G̃ given the updated F.
Until the information rate converges
We have shown that for a given F, the instantaneous infor-
mation rate is concave. On the other hand, for a given G̃, the
information rate is also concave. Based on these observations,
JSRP-I, an AO-based iterative algorithm described in Table
I is proposed to realize the joint source and relay precoding
design. Since the joint source and relay optimization problem
is not convex, the iterative algorithm does not guaranteed will
converge to the globally optimal of the original joint source
and relay precoding design. However, since in each iteration
the optimization problem can be transferred to a standard
convex problem, the iterative algorithm will finally converge
to a local optimal solution.
In Section IV, our simulation results show that JSRP-
I works well in practice. The proposed iterative algorithm
iterates between the relay precoding and the source precoding
optimizations until it converges to a local optimal solution.
The number of iterations it undergoes strongly depends on
the initialization of G̃ and F. Furthermore, in each iteration,
the optimization problem is indeed similar to a point-to-point
MIMO precoding reported in [10] [19]. The complexity of the
proposed JSRP-I can be measured as multiples (> 2) of the
complexity of the point-to-point MIMO case.
Since information rate depends only on G̃, after obtaining
G̃, G could be any matrix satisfying G̃ = GGℋ from (4).
C. A two-step precoding at the source and the relay (JSRP-2)
The JSRP-I algorithm presented in Section III.B needs a
few iterations before it converges. This section studies the
proposed JSRP-2 algorithm which obtains G̃ and F in two
steps. The rationale behind this algorithm is as follows. On
one hand, in practical situations, relaying is used when RL is
most likely to have better transmission quality than DL. On
the other hand, in a relay system without DL, the achieved
information rate is dominated by the transmission from S to
R (the first hop) [11]. Hence we design a two-step algorithm
which first computes G̃ by maximizing the information rate
of the S-R link. After obtaining G̃, the algorithm developed
in Section III.A will be used to compute F.
The input-output relationship of the S-R link is given by
y𝑠𝑑 = 𝑎1 H1 Gx + n1
The achievable information rate optimization for the S-R link
is a typical point-to-point MIMO optimization problem. The
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2009
solution to this problem under the source power constraint (8)
is well known and mathematically given by [10],
ℋ
G̃ = V𝐻1 Λ𝐺˜ V𝐻1
(41)
where Λ𝐺˜ is a diagonal matrix with its main diagonal entries
{ } (𝑖)
are given as Λ𝐺˜ (𝑖, 𝑖) = max 0, 𝜎2 𝜇 1˜ ln 2 − 1(𝑖) , ∀𝑖. 𝜆𝐻1
𝑠 𝐺 𝜌1 𝜆𝐻
1
and V𝐻1 are the 𝑖𝑡ℎ singular value and the unitary matrix of
SVD on Hℋ ℋ ℋ
1 H1 , or H1 H1 = V𝐻1 Λ𝐻1 V𝐻1 . Based on (8),
𝜇𝐺˜ can be obtained from solving the following equation:
∑ { }
1 1
𝜎𝑠2 max 0, 2 − = 𝑝𝑡 (42)
𝑖
𝜎𝑠 𝜇𝐺˜ ln 2 𝜌1 𝜆(𝑖)
𝐻1
With G̃ given in (41) and H3 computed from (6), F can be
derived by using the algorithm developed in Section III.A.
The JSRP-2 algorithm has less complexity than the JSRP-I
algorithm, since it needs only two steps to obtain the precoding
design, while the iterative algorithm might go through a few
iterations before it converges, depending on the initialization
of G̃ and F. Measured in terms of the complexity of the op-
timal precoding design for the point-to-point MIMO channel,
the complexity of JSRP-2 is roughly doubles the complexity
of the point-to-point MIMO channel, whereas the iterative
algorithm has complexity multiple (> 2) of the complexity
of the point-to-point MIMO channel.
IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
In this section, the ergodic capacity of a 3-node MIMO
relay network achieved by our proposed precoding algorithms
under the consideration of DL is evaluated. Flat Rayleigh
fading is assumed for each transmit-receive antenna pair.
Spatial correlation is not considered and the channel gains
are modeled as zero mean unit variance random variables
independent of each other and randomly generated in the
simulations. The numbers of antennas installed at S, R and
D are assumed to be 𝑀 = 𝑁 = 𝐿 = 4.
Fig. 2 to Fig. 4 present the ergodic capacity obtained by the
ROP algorithm developed in Section III.A, i.e., given by G̃ =
I. The ergodic capacity as a function of 𝜌0 is shown in Fig. 2
for four sets of 𝜌1 and 𝜌2 : (a) 𝜌1 = 17.0dB, 𝜌2 = 21.76dB,
(b) 𝜌1 = 21.76dB, 𝜌2 = 17.0dB, (c) 𝜌1 = 𝜌2 = 20.0dB,
and (d) 𝜌1 = 22.78dB, 𝜌2 = 10.0dB. Moreover, 𝜌1 + 𝜌2 is
kept as a constant, 𝜌1 + 𝜌2 = 23.0dB, which means the total
received power at R (𝜌1 ) and at D from the RL (𝜌2 ) sums up
to a constant if 𝜎02 = 𝜎12 = 𝜎22 . Taking the power allocation of
scenario (c) as a reference, scenario (b) and (d) corresponds to
the case where relatively more transmission power is allocated
to S but less to R, while scenario (a) corresponds to the case
where relatively less power is allocated to S but more power
is allocated to R.
From Fig. 2, at low 𝜌0 , says 𝜌0 = 5.0dB, i.e., when the
DL has poor transmission quality, it can be seen that scenario
(d) gives the worst capacity when compared to scenarios (a),
(b) and (c). It is because that, if both 𝜌0 and 𝜌2 are low, or
(40) both the S-D link and R-D link are unreliable, the diversity
combining gain at D is limited even though the S-R link is in
good conditions. In contrast, at high 𝜌0 , says 𝜌0 = 20.0dB,
an unreliable R-D link does not cause significant capacity
MO and CHEW: PRECODER DESIGN FOR NON-REGENERATIVE MIMO RELAY SYSTEMS 5047

35
36 a1=a2=1, a0=0 w/o direct link
a1=a2=1, a0=0.2
34 30 a1=a2=1, a0=0.4
a1=a2=1, a0=0.8
32
25
ergodic capacity

ergodic capacity
30

28 20

26 U1+ U2=23dB 15

24 U1=17dB, U2=21.76dB
U1=21.76dB, U2=17dB
10
22 U1=20dB, U2=20dB
U1=22.78dB, U2=10dB pr/M+pt/M=23dB
20 5
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 5 10 15 20 25
U0 (in dB) pt/M (in dB)

Fig. 2. Ergodic capacity achieved using relay only precoding scheme. Fig. 4. Ergodic capacity for various power distribution in S and R.

40
35
U1=U2=20dB, LB in [11]
U1=U2=20dB, optimal
35 U1=22.78dB,U2=10dB, optimal
U1=22.78dB,U2=10dB, LB in [11]
ergodic capacity U1=U2=20dB, w/o direct link
30
30
ergodic capacity

25

25 U1+ U2= 23dB

20
U0=5dB
U0=10dB
U0=15dB
15
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
20
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 U0 (in dB)
U1/U2
Fig. 5. Capacity comparison with lower bounds in [11].
Fig. 3. Ergodic capacity for various power distribution in S and R.

transmission power per antenna (𝑝𝑡 /𝑀 ) at S, for a few values

degradation, as observed from this figure that the scenario (d)
can achieve capacity roughly identical to that of scenarios (b)
and (c). Furthermore, scenario (b) consistently shows higher
capacity than scenario (a). These observations indicate that the
source and the relay transmission power should be designed
delicately given the locations of S, R and D, in order to achieve
efficient bandwidth utilization.
We next investigate in Fig. 3 the ergodic capacity as a
function of received SNR ratio (𝜌1 /𝜌2 ). It can be seen that
highest capacity is achieved at about 1.4 ratio but not when
𝜌1 = 𝜌2 . This shows that a slightly more reliable S-R link
than a R-D link is necessary to achieve better performance.
In Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, the total received power at R and at
D from the R-D link 𝜌1 + 𝜌2 is kept as a constant. However,
due to different amount of power needed to overcome path
loss at different 𝜌0 (i.e., different destination locations), this
does not mean the total source and relay transmission power
remains unchanged as 𝜌0 varies. To better understand how
the distribution of the source and the relay power affects the
capacity, in Fig. 4, we plot the ergodic capacity as a function of
𝑝𝑡
of S-D path loss 𝑎0 when 𝑎1 = 𝑎2 = 1 and 𝑀 + 𝑝𝑁𝑟 = 23.0dB.
A smaller 𝑎0 refers to a larger S-D distance and hence
severe path loss. It can be seen from Fig. 4 that, there exists
an optimal power distribution between S and R to achieve
capacity, as indicated by the maximum of the respective
curves. This observation indicates that properly distributing
the power between S and R is necessary. However, it also
can be seen that, if the DL is reliable, says 𝑎0 = 0.8 (D is
sufficiently close to S), higher capacity is achieved at a higher
source power 𝑝𝑡 /𝑀 = 22.78dB (thus 𝑝𝑟 /𝑁 = 10.0dB). This
means that performing relaying does not show any advantage,
instead, all power should be allocated to S to transmit signal
directly to D. Fig. 4 also shows similar effect of transmission
power distribution on the achievable ergodic capacity obtained
with and without the consideration of the DL.
In Fig. 5, the ergodic capacity achieved by our proposed
ROP scheme is compared with that of the lower bound (LB) I,
upper bound (UB) and that obtained without the consideration
of the DL studied in [11]. By intuition, given 𝜌1 and 𝜌2 , the
capacity obtained by taking into account the DL transmission
5048 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2009

38
should be higher than that without the consideration of DL. two−step, ρ1=21.76dB, ρ2=17dB
Iterative, ρ1=21.76dB, ρ2=17dB
Fig. 5 does confirm this by the simulation results for 𝜌1 = 36 relay precoding only, ρ1=21.76dB, ρ2=17dB

𝜌2 = 20.0dB and 𝜌1 = 22.78dB, 𝜌2 = 10.0dB. It could relay precoding only, ρ1=17dB, ρ2=21.76dB
two−step, ρ1=17dB, ρ2=21.76dB

also be seen that, the proposed ROP scheme achieves higher 34 Iterative, ρ1=17dB, ρ2=21.76dB
optimal, ρ1=17dB, ρ2=21.76dB
capacity than the lower bound I predicted in [11]. 32
optimal, ρ1=21.76dB, ρ2=17dB

The ergodic capacities achieved by both the JSRP-I scheme

ergodic capacity
and the JSRP-2 scheme are shown in Fig. 6. For 𝜌1 = 30

21.76dB, 𝜌2 = 17.0dB shown in Fig. 6(a), and 𝜌1 = 20.0dB,

𝜌2 = 20.0dB shown in Fig. 6(b), it is observed that the 28

capacity achieved with JSRP-I is larger compared to that ρ1+ρ2=23dB

26
of the ROP design. This observation is different from the
observation obtained for a relay network with negligible DL 24
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

transmission [16], where there is no significant capacity gain ρ0 (in dB)

in performing joint precoding. Furthermore, the capacity gain (a)

achieved with 𝜌1 = 21.76dB, 𝜌2 = 17.0dB is significant than
that of 𝜌1 = 20.0dB, 𝜌2 = 20.0dB. This shows that JSRP-I can relay precoding only
36
achieve more capacity gain when more power is allocated to iterative precoding
two−step precoding

S. However, inappropriate distribution of transmission power 34

optimal iterative precoding

between S and R can make this gain diminish, like the case
of 𝜌1 = 17.0dB and 𝜌2 = 21.76dB. From both Fig. 6(a) 32

ergodic capacity
and Fig. 6(b), it is noted that, JSRP-2 scheme achieves nearly
identical capacity as JSRP-I scheme, which shows that JSRP- 30

I scheme is a good approach to achieve efficient bandwidth

28 ρ1=ρ2=20dB
utilization of a MIMO relay network but with reduced com- ρ +ρ =23dB
1 2

plexity. 26

Finally, we investigate the capacity loss of the proposed

JSRP-I scheme caused by using a particular form of G̃ source 24
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

precoding design derived from (38) compared to the use ρ0 (in dB)

of optimal G̃ obtained by solving the optimization problem (b)

(28) to (31) using the interior point method. The results are
presented in Fig. 6(a) and Fig. 6(b). It can be seen that, the
G̃ obtained from (38) results in capacity loss compared to the Fig. 6. Ergodic capacity of various precoding schemes.
optimal G̃. Furthermore, it can be observed that, with more
power allocated to S, the capacity loss increases, e.g. the loss
for 𝜌1 = 21.76dB and 𝜌2 = 17dB is higher than that of ROP achieves higher ergodic capacity than the capacity pre-
𝜌1 = 17.0dB, 𝜌2 = 21.76dB and 𝜌1 = 20.0dB, 𝜌2 = 20.0dB. dicted by Tang et. al. in [11] which assumed negligible DL
This is attributed to the fact that as more power is allocated transmission. It is also seen that both JSRP-I and JSRP-2 can
to S, source precoding design which approaches the optimal achieve some capacity gain over the ROP scheme. Finally,
design are more beneficial. However we also observe that, we show that the JSRP-2 scheme is sufficiently good to
by using the particular form of G̃ given by (38), the source approach the capacity achieved by the JSRP-I but with reduced
optimization problem (28) to (31) can be reformulated to (34) complexity.
to (37) which can be solved with closed form expression
given by (38). On the other hand, numerical methods, such as
interior point method, have to be applied to obtain the optimal A PPENDIX
G̃, with higher computation complexity. ℋ
Assume D̃ = V𝐴 G̃V𝐴 . The optimizaiton problem (28) to
V. C ONCLUSION (31) is reformulated as
The precoding design for a 3-node MIMO relay network
max log2 ∣I + Λ𝐴 D̃∣ (43)
is investigated under the consideration of non-negligible DL D̃
transmission. The ROP scheme, which assume a uniform { }
𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 D̃ ≤ 𝑝𝑡 (44)
power allocation across the multiple antennas at the source, is { } { }
first studied. An iterative algorithm, JSRP-I, is next proposed 𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 𝑎21 BD̃ + 𝑡𝑟 𝜎12 Fℋ F ≤ 𝑝𝑟 (45)
to jointly obtain the precoding design at both the source and D̃ ર 0 (46)
the relay. A two-step precoding algorithm, JSRP-2, which
performs precoding design independently at the source and the The constraint (46) is to ensure D̃ to be positive semi-definite.
relay in two steps is finally studied, to reduce the processing The Lagrangian function is given as
complexity of the iterative algorithm. The ergodic capacity ( { })
achieved by the three proposed schemes under various sce- ℓ = log2 ∣I + Λ𝐴 D̃∣ + 𝜂1 𝑝𝑡 − 𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 D̃ + (47)
( { 2 2 } { 2 ℋ }) { }
narios is evaluated. Numerical results show that the proposed 𝜂2 𝑝𝑟 − 𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠 𝑎1 BD̃ − 𝑡𝑟 𝜎1 F F + 𝑡𝑟 ΨD̃
MO and CHEW: PRECODER DESIGN FOR NON-REGENERATIVE MIMO RELAY SYSTEMS
The Krush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions [21] are given as
{ } ( { })
𝑝𝑡 ≥ 𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 D̃ , 𝜂1 𝑝𝑡 − 𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 D̃ = 0,
{ } { }
𝑝𝑟 ≥ 𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 𝑎21 BD̃ + 𝑡𝑟 𝜎12 Fℋ F
( { } { })
𝜂2 𝑝𝑟 − 𝑡𝑟 𝜎𝑠2 𝑎21 BD̃ − 𝑡𝑟 𝜎12 Fℋ F = 0
𝜂1 ≥ 0, 𝜂2 ≥ 0, D̃ ર 0, Ψર0
{ }
𝑡𝑟 ΨD̃ = 0,
−1
(I ln 2 + Λ𝐴 D̃ ln 2) Λ𝐴 − 𝜂1 𝜎𝑠2 I − 𝜂2 𝜎𝑠2 𝑎21 B
+Ψ = 0
The constraint (48) equivalently indicates [25]
{ }
𝑡𝑟 ΨD̃ = 0 ⇔ ΨD̃ = 0, ∀Ψ ર 0, D̃ ર 0
Multiplying (49) by D̃ and use (50), we have
[ ]
(I ln 2 + Λ𝐴 D̃ ln 2)−1 Λ𝐴 − 𝜂1 𝜎𝑠2 I − 𝜂2 𝜎𝑠2 𝑎21 B D̃ = 0 (51)
Since in general B is not a diagonal matrix, it can be
seen from (51) that, D̃𝑜𝑝𝑡 is no longer diagonal, which
also indicates that the optimal G̃ should not diagonalize A.
This is different from a point-to-point MIMO system, where
the optimal input covariance matrix should diagonalize the
channel covariance matrix and thus allowing scalarization of
the optimization problem [19].
R EFERENCES
[1] R. Pabst et. al., “Relay based deployment concepts for wireless and
mobile broadband radio," IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 42, pp. 80-89, Sept.
2004.
[2] E. C. Van De Meulen, “Three terminal communication channels," Adv.
Appl. Prob., pp. 120-154, 1971.
[3] H. Sato, “Information transmission through a channel with relay," Tech.
Rep. B7-67, The Aloha system, U. of Hawaii, Mar. 1976.
[4] T. Cover and A. El Gamal, “Capacity theorems for the relay channel,"
IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 25, pp. 572-584, Sept. 1979.
[5] J. N. Laneman, D. N. C. Tse, and G. G. Wornell, “Cooperative diversity in
wireless networks: efficient protocols and outage behavior," IEEE Trans.
Inform. Theory, vol. 50, pp. 3062-3080, Dec. 2004.
[6] G. Kramer, G. Gastpar, and P. Gupta, “Cooperative strategies and capacity
theorems for relay networks," IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, pp.
3037-3063, Sept. 2005.
[7] A. Host Madsen and J. Zhang, “Capacity bounds and power allocation
for the wireless relay channels," IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51,
pp. 2020-2040, June 2005.
[8] Y. Liang and V. V. Veeravalli, “Gaussian orthogonal relay channels:
optimal resource allocation and capacity," IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory,
vol. 51, pp. 3284-3289, Sept. 2005.
[9] J. G. Foschini and M. Gans, “On the limits of wireless communication in
a fading environment when using multiple antennas," Wireless Personal
Commun., vol. 6, pp. 311-335, Mar. 1998.
[10] E. Telatar, “Capacity of multi-antenna Gaussian channels," Eur. Trans.
Telecomm. ETT, vol. 10, pp. 585-596, Nov. 1999.
[11] X. Tang and Y. Hua, “Optimal Design of non-generative MIMO wireless
relays," IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 6, pp. 1398-1407, Apr. 2007.
[12] H. Bolcskei, et al., “Capacity scaling laws in MIMO relay networks,"
IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 5, pp. 1433-1444, June 2006.
5049
[13] O. Munoz, J. Vidal, and A. Agustin, “Non-regenerative MIMO relaying
with channel state information," in Proc. IEEE Conf. on Acoustics, Speech
Signal Processing (ICASSP 2005), vol. 3, pp. 361-364, Mar. 2005.
[14] R. U. Nabar, H. Bolcskei, and F. W. Kneubuhler, “Fading relay channels:
performance limit and space-time signal design," IEEE J. Select. Areas
Commun., vol. 22, pp. 1099-1109, Aug. 2004.
[15] B. Wang, J. Zhang, and A. Host-Madsen, “On the capacity of MIMO
relay channels," IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, pp. 29-43, Jan.
2005.
(48) [16] Z. Fang, Y. Hua, and J. C. Koshy, “Joint source and relay optimization
for a non-regenerative MIMO relay," in Proc. 4th IEEE Workshop Sensor
Array Multichannel Processing, pp. 239-243, 2006.
(49) [17] I. Hammerstroem and A. Wittneben, “Joint power allocation for nonre-
generative MIMO-OFDM relay links," in Proc. IEEE Conf. on Acoustics,
Speech Signal Processing (ICASSP 2006), vol. 4, pp. 49-52, 2006.
[18] A. K. Sadek, W. Su, and K. J. Ray Liu, “Multinode cooperative
(50) communication in wireless networks," IEEE Trans. Signal Processing,
vol. 55, pp. 341-355, Jan. 2007.
[19] S. Barbarossa, Multiantenna Wireless Communication Systems. Artech
House, 2005.
[20] T. M. Cover and J. A. Thomas, Elements of Information Theory. New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991.
[21] S. Boyd and L. Vandenberghe, Convex Optimization. Cambridge U.
Press.
[22] M. Lundberg and L. Svensson, “The Haar measure and the generation
of random unitary matrix," in Proc. IEEE Sensor Array Multichannel
Signal Processing Workshop, pp. 11-118, 2004.
[23] R. Hunger et al., “Alternating optimization for MMSE broadcast pre-
coding," in Proc. IEEE Intern. Conf. Acoustic, Speech Signal Processing
(ICASSP 2006), vol. 4, pp. 757-760, May 2006.
[24] L. Xiao, et al., “Joint optimization of communication rates and linear
systems," IEEE Trans. Automatic Control, vol. 48, pp. 148-153, Jan. 2003.
[25] D. S. Bernstein, Matrix Mathematics: Theory, Facts, and Formulas with
Application to Linear Systems Theory. Princeton U. Press, Feb. 2005.
[26] D. P. Bertsekas, Nonlinear Programming, 2nd ed. Belmont, MA: Athena
Scientific, 1999.
Ronghong Mo (M’09) received her B.Sc. and M.Sc.
degrees in Physics from Zhongshan University, and
PhD degree in electrical engineering from National
University of Singapore (NUS). From Sep. 2003
to Aug. 2005, she was a research fellow in NUS,
investigating novel synchronization algorithms for
wireless OFDM systems. She joined Panasonic Sin-
gapore Laboratory Pte Ltd as a research engineer in
Sep 2005, developing transmission technologies for
wireless MIMO systems and involving in standard-
ization for LTE. She is currently a senior research
fellow in the Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore. Her research
interests are in synchronization, channel estimation, MIMO relay network
design and application of game theory to wireless communication systems.
Yong Huat Chew (M’97) received the B.Eng.,
M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineer-
ing from National University of Singapore (NUS),
Singapore. He has been with the Institute for In-
focomm Research (formerly also known as Cen-
tre for Wireless Communications and Institute for
Communications Research), where he is presently
a senior Scientist, since 1996. He is also holding
an adjunct position in the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, NUS, since 1999, and
he is currently an adjunct associate professor. His
research interests are in technologies related to high spectrally efficient
wireless communication systems.