An optimized unitary beamforming technique for MIMO broadcast channels

This paper addresses the problem of linear beamforming design in MIMO broadcast channels. An iterative optimization method for unitary beamforming is proposed, based on successive optimization of Givens rotations. Under the assumption of perfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) and for practical average signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), the proposed technique provides higher sum rates than zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming while performing close to minimum-mean- squared-error (MMSE) beamforming when the number of transmit antennas equals the number of scheduled users. Moreover, it is shown to achieve linear sum-rate growth with the number of transmit antennas. Interestingly, the proposed unitary beamforming approach proves to be very robust to channel estimation errors. In the simulated scenarios, it provides better sum rates than ZF beamforming and even MMSE beamforming as the variance of the estimation error increases. When combined with simple vector quantization techniques for CSIT feedback in systems with multiuser scheduling, the proposed technique proves to be well suited for limited feedback scenarios with practical number of users, exhibiting performance gains over existing techniques.