Symbol-Level Precoding with Constellation Rotation in the Finite Block Length Regime

This paper tackles the problem of optimizing the parameters of a symbol-level precoder for downlink multiantenna multi-user systems in the finite block length regime. Symbol-level precoding (SLP) is a non-linear technique for multiuser wireless networks, which exploits constructive interference among co-channel links. Current SLP designs, however, implicitly assume asymptotically infinite blocks, since they do not take into account that the design rules for finite and especially short blocks might significantly differ. This paper fills this gap by introducing a novel SLP design based on discrete constellation rotations. The rotations are the added degree of freedom that can be optimized for every block to be transmitted, for instance, to save transmit power. Numerical evaluations of the proposed method indicate substantial power savings, which might be over 99% compared to the traditional SLP, at the expense of a single additional pilot symbol per block for constellation de-rotation.