Tomlinson-Harashima Precoded Rate-Splitting With Stream Combiners for MU-MIMO Systems

This article introduces multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) architectures based on non-linear precoding and stream combining techniques using rate-splitting (RS), where the transmitter often has only partial knowledge of the channel state information (CSI). In contrast to existing works, we consider deployments where the receivers may be equipped with multiple antennas. This allows us to employ linear combining techniques based on the Min-Max, the maximum ratio and the minimum mean-square error criteria along with Tomlinson-Harashima precoders (THP) for RS-based MU-MIMO systems to enhance the sum-rate performance. Moreover, we incorporate the Multi-Branch (MB) concept into the RS architecture to further improve the sum-rate performance. Closed-form expressions for the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and the sum-rate at the receiver end are devised through statistical analysis. Simulation results show that the proposed RS-THP schemes achieve better performance than conventional linear and THP precoders.