Interference Exploitation via Symbol-Level Precoding: Overview, State-of-the-Art and Future Directions

Interference is traditionally viewed as a performance limiting factor in wireless communication systems, which is to be minimized or mitigated. Nevertheless, a recent line of work has shown that by manipulating the interfering signals such that they add up constructively at the receiver side, known interference can be made beneficial and further improve the system performance in a variety of wireless scenarios, achieved by symbol-level precoding (SLP). This paper aims to provide a tutorial on interference exploitation techniques from the perspective of precoding design in a multi-antenna wireless communication system, by beginning with the classification of constructive interference (CI) and destructive interference (DI). The definition for CI is presented and the corresponding mathematical characterization is formulated for popular modulation types, based on which optimization-based precoding techniques are discussed. In addition, the extension of CI precoding to other application scenarios as well as for hardware efficiency is also described. Proof-of-concept testbeds are demonstrated for the potential practical implementation of CI precoding, and finally a list of open problems and practical challenges are presented to inspire and motivate further research directions in this area

Rate-splitting multiple access for non-terrestrial communication and sensing networks

Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) has emerged as a powerful and flexible non-orthogonal transmission, multiple access (MA) and interference management scheme for future wireless networks. This thesis is concerned with the application of RSMA to non-terrestrial communication and sensing networks. Various scenarios and algorithms are presented and evaluated. First, we investigate a novel multigroup/multibeam multicast beamforming strategy based on RSMA in both terrestrial multigroup multicast and multibeam satellite systems with imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The max-min fairness (MMF)-degree of freedom (DoF) of RSMA is derived and shown to provide gains compared with the conventional strategy. The MMF beamforming optimization problem is formulated and solved using the weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE) algorithm. Physical layer design and link-level simulations are also investigated. RSMA is demonstrated to be very promising for multigroup multicast and multibeam satellite systems taking into account CSIT uncertainty and practical challenges in multibeam satellite systems. Next, we extend the scope of research from multibeam satellite systems to satellite- terrestrial integrated networks (STINs). Two RSMA-based STIN schemes are investigated, namely the coordinated scheme relying on CSI sharing and the co- operative scheme relying on CSI and data sharing. Joint beamforming algorithms are proposed based on the successive convex approximation (SCA) approach to optimize the beamforming to achieve MMF amongst all users. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed RSMA schemes for STINs are demonstrated. Finally, we consider RSMA for a multi-antenna integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) system, which simultaneously serves multiple communication users and estimates the parameters of a moving target. Simulation results demonstrate that RSMA is beneficial to both terrestrial and multibeam satellite ISAC systems by evaluating the trade-off between communication MMF rate and sensing Cramer-Rao bound (CRB).Open Acces

Multigroup Multicast Precoding for Energy Optimization in SWIPT Systems with Heterogeneous Users

The key to developing future generations of wireless communication systems lies in the expansion of extant methodologies, which ensures the coexistence of a variety of devices within a system. In this paper, we assume several multicasting (MC) groups comprising three types of heterogeneous users including Information Decoding (ID), Energy Harvesting (EH) and both ID and EH. We present a novel framework to investigate the multi-group (MG) - MC precoder designs for three different scenarios, namely, Separate Multicast and Energy Precoding Design (SMEP), Joint Multicast and Energy Precoding Design (JMEP), and Per-User Information and/or Energy Precoding Design (PIEP). In the considered system, a multi-antenna source transmits the relevant information and/or energy to the groups of corresponding receivers using more than one MC streams. The data processing users employ the conventional ID receiver architectures, the EH users make use of a non-linear EH module for energy acquisition, while the users capable of performing both ID and EH utilize the separated architecture with disparate ID and non-linear EH units. Our contribution is threefold. Firstly, we propose an optimization framework to i) minimize the total transmit power and ii) to maximize the sum harvested energy, the two key performance metrics of MG-MC systems. The proposed framework allows the analysis of the system under arbitrary given quality of service and harvested energy requirements. Secondly, to deal with the non-convexity of the formulated problems, we transform the original problems respectively into equivalent forms, which can be effectively solved by semi-definite relaxation (SDR) and alternating optimization. The convergence of the proposed algorithms is analytically guaranteed. Thirdly, a comparative study between the proposed schemes is conducted via extensive numerical results, wherein the benefits of adopting SMEP over JMEP and PIEP models are discusse