Network-Controlled Repeaters Under Power Amplifier Non-linearities
For wireless network designers, this work addresses the practical issue of PA non-linearities in low-cost repeaters, offering a distortion-aware solution to enhance multiuser performance.
The paper develops a distortion-aware uplink framework for network-controlled repeaters in massive MIMO systems, accounting for power amplifier non-linearities. It derives closed-form expressions for distortion statistics and a combining vector that maximizes the effective signal-to-interference-plus-distortion ratio, improving spectral efficiency.
Network-controlled repeaters (NCRs) are a low-cost means to extend coverage and strengthen macro diversity in wireless networks. They operate in real time by amplifying and re-transmitting the incoming signal with only hardware-level delays, without requiring any channel state information (CSI) at the repeater itself. However, their power amplifiers (PAs) generate non-linear distortion that is jointly forwarded with the desired signal and can undermine multiuser performance unless the distortion statistics are exploited. This paper develops a distortion-aware (DA) uplink framework for repeater-assisted massive MIMO (RA-MIMO) under PA non-linearities. We adopt a memoryless third-order polynomial model for the repeater PA and characterize the achievable spectral efficiency (SE) using the Bussgang decomposition. Closed-form expressions are derived for the Bussgang gain matrix and the distortion covariance. We also design a DA combining vector that maximizes the effective signal-to-interference-plus-distortion ratio.