Limited-Feedback Precoding for Dual-Hop MIMO Relay Systems with SIC Receivers

Joint source/relay precoding has been considered an effective method to improve the system performance of dual-hop amplify-and-forward (AF) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) relay systems. For practical implementations, the codebook-based limited-feedback precoding is widely exploited since the feedback bits can be effectively limited. As known, system performance strongly depends on the codeword selection criterion. In this paper, we will explore how to design the selection criterion when successive interference cancellation (SIC) receivers are adopted at the destination. Starting from the QR-SIC receiver, we first propose a centralized selection scheme by maximizing the minimum postprocessing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Next, a decentralized selection scheme is further developed to reduce the computational complexity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our methods can be directly extended to the system with the minimum mean square error (MMSE)-SIC receiver. Simulation results show that the proposed designs can significantly improve system performance.