Robust joint precoding/combining design for multiuser MIMO systems with calibration errors

Abstract

We consider the downlink of a multiuser system operating in the time-division duplexing mode, for which base station (BS) and users are equipped with multiple antennas, and provide a robust precoding/combining design against imperfect channel state information (CSI) and calibration errors due to hardware mismatch. Towards this end, we first formulate a robust joint precoder and combiner design as a stochastic minimum mean squared error optimization problem. Then, employing an alternating optimization approach, we propose an algorithm to obtain the precoding and combining matrices assuming imperfect CSI and calibration errors at both the BS and the user sides. We also provide asymptotic closed-form expressions for the mean squared error (MSE) and the achievable sum-rate in the massive MIMO regime. The results indicate that while the MSE linearly increases with the calibration errors at the user side, the sum-rate is asymptotically independent of them. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed robust joint precoder/combiner outperforms the existing solutions while having the same order of complexity. Moreover, when the BS sends a quantized version of the combining coefficients to the users, it is observed that the proposed solution is more robust to the quantization errors than the existing algorithms.