Statistical Eigenmode-Based SDMA for Two-User Downlink

This paper proposes a statistical-eigenmode space-division multiple-access (SE-SDMA) transmission approach for a two-user downlink system where two transmit antennas are deployed at the base station and each mobile user has only one receive antenna, assuming that only statistical channel state information (SCSI) is available at the transmitter. By maximizing a lower bound of the ergodic signal-to-leakage-and-noise ratio (SLNR), the proposed SE-SDMA approach selects two users with orthogonal principal statistical eigen-directions and then transmits to each user along the corresponding eigenmode. For this approach, we derive an exact expression of the achievable ergodic rate, and compare it with the zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) system exploiting instantaneous CSI. We show that SE-SDMA can achieve the maximum ergodic sum-rate of the two selected users, and provide significant user selection gains. For comparison with ZFBF, we show that the rate gap between SE-SDMA and ZFBF with perfect CSI at the transmitter (CSIT) tends to zero in highly correlated channels. Further, when ZFBF is implemented with inaccurate CSIT, the operating regions of SE-SDMA and ZFBF are investigated for different ranges of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), instantaneous CSIT accuracy levels, and spatial correlation levels. Numerical results confirm the analytically derived conclusions, and physical insights are provided.