A CCI-feedback-aided scheduling technique for MU-MIMO

Imperfect channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter is one of the major challenges that the downlink multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MU-MIMO) technology faces in real applications. It will lead to increased co-channel interference (CCI) among users and deteriorate the capacity of MU-MIMO seriously, especially at high signal-to-noise-ratios (SNRs), In this paper, we propose an advanced MU-MIMO scheduling technique to improve the capacity of MU-MIMO in the case of imperfect CSI at the transmitter (CSIT). The rational behind the proposed scheme is the observation that the CCI level increases with the number of users simultaneously supported in MU-MIMO transmission. Thus, decreasing the number of simultaneous users can reduce CCI and sometimes even increase the sum capacity. Motivated by this observation, we design a CCI-feedback-aided scheduling technique, which adaptively adjusts the number of simultaneous users based on the CCI measurement at the user side. Simulation results have shown that considerable capacity gain can be achieved by the proposed scheduling technique at the cost of only one bit additional feedback per user and marginal complexity increase at both the transmitter and user side.