  In downlink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, block
diagonalization (BD) is a practical linear precoding scheme which achieves the
same degrees of freedom (DoF) as the optimal linear/nonlinear precoding
schemes. However, its sum-rate performance is rather poor in the practical SNR
regime due to the transmit power boost problem. In this paper, we propose an
improved linear precoding scheme over BD with a so-called
"effective-SNR-enhancement" technique. The transmit covariance matrices are
obtained by firstly solving a power minimization problem subject to the minimum
rate constraint achieved by BD, and then properly scaling the solution to
satisfy the power constraints. It is proved that such approach equivalently
enhances the system SNR, and hence compensates the transmit power boost problem
associated with BD. The power minimization problem is in general non-convex. We
therefore propose an efficient algorithm that solves the problem heuristically.
Simulation results show significant sum rate gains over the optimal BD and the
existing minimum mean square error (MMSE) based precoding schemes.
