Predictive Channel Quantization and Beamformer Design for MIMO-BC with Limited Feedback

For a cellular system based on frequency division duplexing where the base station (BS) is equipped with multiple antennas and the mobile terminals (MTs) have one antenna each, we propose joint techniques to a) feed back channel state information from MTs to the BS, b) design the beamformer and c) schedule downlink transmissions. We propose that both BS and MT predict channel variations, and the feedback (FB) information from MT to BS is given by the prediction error. For the beamformer design we both consider a zero forcing approach and investigate a new solution based on the minimum mean square error criterion, which takes into account the quantization error. By exploiting the FB information, we derive approximated expressions of the signal to noise ratio relative to each MT, used at BS to perform scheduling with an efficient greedy algorithm. Performance assessment on realistic 3GPP channel models show that the proposed techniques provide a significant improvement of the network throughput at a lower FB rate than existing solutions.