Cooperative multi-user MIMO based on limited feedback in downlink OFDM systems

Multi-cellular radio systems are often limited due to the presence of cochannel interference. Physical layer concepts as e.g. interference rejection combining, optimize the receiver side and thus strengthen the signal while combating the interference at the terminal side only. It is well known that joint transceiver optimization, i.e. coordinated joint transmission from several base stations, yields large capacity improvement for downlink transmission. However, the performance highly depends on the available channel knowledge. We focus on how to realize a decentralized and limited cooperative downlink transmission in a multi-cellular network. This yields the crucial question: Is an efficient cooperative transmission possible by using simple channel quality identifiers, or is channel state information at the transmitter mandatory? Further, we use minimum mean square error equalization at the terminal side to combat residual cochannel interference. For baseline we apply receiver optimization only and compare these results with those obtained from cooperative transmission. We demonstrate potential capacity gains in a cellular orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system and their scaling with the number of cooperating antenna arrays.