Constant Envelope Precoding by Interference Exploitation in Phase Shift Keying-Modulated Multiuser Transmission

We introduce a new approach to constant-envelope precoding (CEP) based on an interference-driven optimization region for generic phase-shift-keying modulations in the multi-user (MU) multiple-input-multiple-output downlink. While conventional precoding approaches aim to minimize the multi-user interference (MUI) with a total sum-power constraint at the transmitter, in the proposed scheme we consider MUI as a source of additional energy to increase the signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio at the receiver. In our studies, we focus on two different CEP approaches: a first technique, where the power at each antenna is fixed to a specific value, and a two-step approach, where we first relax the power constraints to be lower than a defined parameter and then enforce CEP transmission. The algorithms are studied in terms of computational costs, with a detailed comparison between the proposed approach and the classical interference suppression schemes from the literature. Moreover, we analytically derive a robust optimization region to counteract the effects of channel-state estimation errors. The presented schemes are evaluated in terms of achievable symbol error rate in a perfect and imperfect channel-state information scenario for different modulation orders. Our results show that the proposed techniques further extend the benefits of classical CEP by judiciously relaxing the optimization region.