Cooperative Hybrid Beamforming for the Mitigation of Realistic Asynchronous Interference in Cell-Free mmWave MIMO Networks

Cooperative hybrid transmit precoder (TP) and receive combiner (RC) design algorithms are conceived for cell-free millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) networks, operating in the face of asynchronous interference (ASI). To begin with, a Wiener filtering-based optimal hybrid TP/RC (WHB-U) design is proposed for unicast scenarios that minimizes the normalized mean squared error (NMSE) between the received signal and the desired signal subject to user-specific power constraints. Next, a signal-to-leakage plus noise ratio (SLNR) maximization-based hybrid TP/RC design (SHB-U) is conceived, which reduces the interference engendered by the signal transmission targeted towards a specific user, rather than focuses on the interference at a particular user. Next, a multicast transmission scenario is considered, wherein the users belonging to a particular multicast group request identical information. Toward this, the WHB-M and SHB-M hybrid TP/RC schemes are designed for mitigating both the inter-user and inter-group interference. Subsequently, we also develop a Bayesian learning (BL)-based framework for jointly designing the RF and baseband (BB) TPs/RCs for both unicast and multicast scenarios, which does not require the full knowledge of mmWave MIMO channel components. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed TP/RC schemes is extensively evaluated by simulations both in terms of their ability to mitigate the ASI, and the spectral efficiency attained.