Energy efficient downlink MIMO transmission with linear precoding

Energy efficiency (EE) is becoming increasingly important for wireless cellular networks. This paper addresses EE optimization problems in downlink multiuser MIMO systems with linear precoding. Referring to different active transmit/receive antenna sets and transmission schemes as different modes, we propose a joint bandwidth/power optimization and mode switching scheme to maximize EE. With a specific mode, we prove that the optimal bandwidth and transmit power is either full transmit power or full bandwidth. After deriving the optimal bandwidth and transmit power, we further propose mode switching to select the mode with optimal EE. Since the optimal mode switching, i.e. exhaustive search, is too complex to implement, an alternative heuristic method is developed to decrease the complexity through reducing the search size and avoiding the EE calculation during each search. Through simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed methods can significantly improve EE and the performance is similar to the optimal exhaustive search.