Low complexity nonlinear detection for multiuser hybrid MIMO systems and performance analysis

This paper proposes an analytical framework and a system of distortion-aware receiver structures for single-carrier uplink hybrid beamforming-based multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) channels. Proposed single-user processing units cooperate at the base station (BS) in an iterative manner for multi-user symbol detection under hardware impairments. Firstly, in the proposed system, an iterative nonlinear interference cancellation (nIC) based on feedforward neural network (NN) modeling is developed to eliminate the nonlinear distortion effects of power amplifiers (PAs). Furthermore, depending on the fading pattern of the instantaneous channel, it is analytically shown that a large gain may be applied to the distortion signal during the equalization stage, which yields distortion amplification causing a significant decrease in the signal-to-distortion-plus-noise ratio (SDNR). A reduced complexity distortion aware detector, based on a bank of fractionally delayed iterative block decision feedback equalization (IB-DFE) receivers, is introduced to adjust the combiner weights for fractionally delayed IB-DFE outputs so that distortion power is minimized before detection. Consequently, multi-user detection capability is enhanced considerably. Secondly, an asymptotic SDNR analysis is performed. The theoretical analysis, verified via numerical evaluations, clearly shows that distortion amplification limits the achievable SDNR at the BS, and the proposed reduced complexity multi-user receiver architecture improves the BER performance by effectively mitigating this effect.