In this paper, we propose a new hybrid analog and digital combining architecture for millimeter wave (mmWave) multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems. The proposed structure employs antenna subset selection per radio frequency (RF) chain based on active/inactive switches and uses constant phase shifters (CPS) to control the phases of signals in the RF circuit. In this scheme, for each RF chain, a subset of receive antennas that contribute more to the desired signal power than the interference power is chosen for signal combining in the analog domain, whereas other receive antennas are excluded from signal combining, thereby enhancing sum-rates. Simultaneously, the proposed structure reduces power consumption in the RF circuit by exclusively activating switches that correspond to the antennas selected for each RF chain. We also develop three low-complexity algorithms for per-RF chain antenna subset selection. Finally, through numerical simulation, we show that the proposed structure provides higher spectral efficiency and higher energy efficiency than conventional hybrid analog and digital combining schemes for mmWave MU-MIMO systems.

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The hybrid precoding and combining algorithms for mmWave massive multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) systems must consider the trade-off between the complexity and performance of the system. Unfortunately, because of the unit-norm constraint imposed by the use of phase shifters, the optimization of the radio frequency (RF) precoder and combiner becomes a non-convex problem. As a consequence, the algorithm for hybrid precoding and combining design often incurs high complexity. This paper proposes a dictionary-constrained low-complexity algorithm for hybrid precoding and combining design. The proposed algorithm considers a decoupled optimization scheme between the RF and baseband domains for the spectral efficiency-maximization problem. In the RF domain, we propose an incremental successive selection method to find a subset of array response vectors from a dictionary, which forms the RF precoding/combining matrices. For the digital domain, we employ singular-value decomposition (SVD) of the low-dimensional effective channel matrix to generate the digital baseband precoder and combiner. Through numerical simulation, we show that the proposed algorithm achieves near-optimal performance while providing approximately up to 99% complexity reduction compared to the conventional hybrid precoding and combining algorithms.

In this study, we propose a joint hybrid-precoding algorithm for multiuser multiple-input single-output downlink systems. Specifically, we consider that the base station employs an energy-efficient hybrid-precoding subconnected (SC) architecture with fixed equal subarrays (FESA) (SC-FESA). Optimizing the analog precoding matrix in an SC-FESA architecture is challenging due to its unique constraint structure. In this study, to maximize system sum rate, we propose an efficient method to transform the system’s sum-rate optimization problem into a continuous and differentiable objective function wherein only the nonzero elements of the analog precoding matrix are optimized. For the formulated problem, we develop an alternating optimization (AO) approach to jointly optimize the digital and analog precoders in succession by maximizing the system’s sum rate. Specifically, in the proposed AO method, when the digital precoder is fixed, we employ the Riemannian conjugate gradient algorithm to generate the analog precoder. Furthermore, when the analog precoder is fixed, we use the minimum mean squared error method to obtain the digital precoder. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed AO algorithm improves the sum rate and energy efficiency of the SC-FESA architecture compared to existing algorithms.