Robust Iterative Transceiver Beamforming for Multipair Two-Way Distributed Relay Networks

In this paper, the transceiver beamforming problem is studied for multipair two-way distributed relay networks, particularly with multi-antenna user nodes and in the presence of channel state errors. With multi-antenna setting on the user nodes, some of the usual signal processing tasks are shifted from the relay nodes to the user nodes with the proposed transceiver beamforming designs. The transmit beamforming vectors, distributed relay coefficients, and the receive beamforming vectors are obtained by iteratively solving three sub-problems, each having a closed-form solution. The tasks of maximizing desired signal power, and reducing inter-pair interference and noise are thus allocated to different iteration steps. By this arrangement, the transmit and receive beamformers of each user are responsible for improving its own performance and the distributed relay nodes with simple amplify-and-forward protocol aim at creating a comfortable communication environment for all user pairs. With respect to the channel uncertainty, two relay strategies are proposed considering two different requirements from the communication network: sum relay output power and individual relay output power. Our simulation demonstrates that the performance improvement can be very significant through cooperation of the three components, especially when the number of relay nodes is large.