Massive MIMO is one of the key technologies of the 5th generation mobile networks (5G), which enables base stations to serve higher order of users with spatial division multiplexing. Non-linear precoding schemes for multi-user (MU) transmissions, especially Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP), is one of the candidate techniques for future enhancements of 5G massive MIMO. As system-level performance investigations usually provide key results for the decision on introducing a technique into the specifications of mobile networks, we propose a physical layer signal model of THP for system-level evaluations. It models the major differences on signal processing between THP and conventional linear precoding schemes. With the introduced model, the spectrum efficiency of THP is investigated in two typical 5G scenarios where high order MU-MIMO will be used. The system-level evaluations demonstrate the potential gain of THP in practical multi-cell networks, and it verifies the advantages of THP on multi-user MIMO downlink transmissions. The observations from the investigations with different user scheduling and parameter settings also provide us hints on the further performance optimization of THP based downlink transmissions.
System-Level Model and Performance Evaluations of Tomlinson-Harashima Precoding for 5G Networks
2018-08-01
225712 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English