Per-antenna Power Minimization in Symbol-Level Precoding

This paper investigates the problem of the interference among multiple simultaneous transmissions in the downlink channel of a multi-antenna wireless system. A symbol-level precoding scheme is considered, where the data information is used, along with the channel state information, in order to exploit the multi-user interference and transform it into useful power at the receiver side. In this framework, it is important to consider the power limitations individually for each transmitting antenna, since a common practice in multi-antenna systems is the use of separate per-antenna amplifiers. Thus, herein the problem of per-antenna power minimization in symbol-level precoding is formulated and solved, under Quality-of-Service constraints. In the proposed approach, the precoding design is optimized in order to control the instantaneous power transmitted by the antennas, and more specifically to limit the power peaks, while guaranteeing some specific target signal-to-noise ratios at the receivers. Numerical results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, which outperforms the existing state of the art techniques in terms of reduction of the power peaks and of the peak-to-average power ratio across the transmitting antennas.