A Bayesian matching pursuit based scheduling algorithm for feedback reduction in MIMO broadcast channels

Opportunistic schedulers rely on the feedback of all users in order to schedule a set of users with favorable channel conditions. While the downlink channels can be easily estimated at all user terminals via a single broadcast, several key challenges are faced during uplink transmission. First of all, the statistics of the noisy and fading feedback channels are unknown at the base station (BS) and channel training is usually required from all users. Secondly, the amount of network resources (air-time) required for feedback transmission grows linearly with the number of users. In this paper, we tackle the above challenges and propose a Bayesian based scheduling algorithm that 1) reduces the air-time required to identify the strong users, and 2) is agnostic to the statistics of the feedback channels and utilizes the a priori statistics of the additive noise to identify the strong users. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm reduces the feedback air-time while improving detection in the presence of fading and noisy channels when compared to recent compressed sensing based algorithms. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm achieves a sum-rate throughput close to that obtained by noiseless dedicated feedback systems.