A method of minimum overhead beamforming transmission using limited feedback for FDD multi-user massive MIMO-OFDM systems
摘要
In this paper, a beamforming (BF) method is discussed aiming at the maximization of the system average transmission rate using minimum channel state information (CSI), i.e., statistical/reduced CSI that is easier to obtain than instantaneous CSI. Maximizing the system transmission rate with limited feedback is one of the major bottlenecks in massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with hybrid architecture in frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems. In FDD systems, users need to feed back limited CSI to the base station for the BF process as the channel reciprocity is not obeyed in these systems. However, due to the high dimensionality of mMIMO-OFDM systems, humongous overhead of the uplink CSI feedback is a big concern for FDD-based systems particularly for the BF process. To handle this, statistical CSI becomes more useful for controlling the amount of feedback, especially for multi-carrier mMIMO systems. Moreover, the proposed hybrid BF method achieves a reasonable average system transmission rate as compared to that of a full CSI feedback scheme utilizing the minimum/statistical/reduced CSI feedback in the resource allocation process using fewer radio frequency chains. Simulation results depict that a multi-user mMIMO-OFDM system incurs a little degradation in average system transmission rate performance with quite less CSI feedback load by the utilization of statistical CSI or infrequent CSI.