Tomlinson-Harashima precoding with imperfect channel state information

Nonlinear Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) is an attractive solution for a scenario where the transmission system employs multiple antennas at transmitter and multiple users with a single antenna at the receiver, so that the cooperation among the receive antennas are impossible (downlink scenario). THP solution based on zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) criteria is one of the important techniques to achieve near multiple input multiple output channels capacity with reasonable complexity. In this paper, the effect of channel imperfection on THP is considered. At first, the achievable rate of THP with respect to ZF criterion in an imperfect channel state information (CST) scenario is calculated. Moreover, based on MMSE criterion, a new robust solution is derived which provides a significant improvement with respect to the conventional optimisation method. Then, the effect of channel estimation error on THP is considered as an improved optimisation where THP filters are optimised together with a channel estimator. Spatial power loading is found to be important to the THP performance. This loading for robust/joint optimisation of MMSE THP is developed by minimum average symbol error rate sense. Simulation results show the capacity loss, the performance advantage attained by the robust/joint optimisation and the power loading in an imperfect CST scenario.