Beamforming uulizing channel norm feedback in multiuser MIMO systems

The problem of beamforming and rate estimation in a multi-user downlink multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with limited feedback and statistical channel information at the transmitter is considered. In order to exploit the spatial properties of the channel, the norm of the channel to each receive antenna is computed. We propose to feed back the largest norm to the transmitter and derive the conditional second and fourth order channel moments in order to design the downlink beamforming weights. Similar approaches have previously been presented for multi-user multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems. Herein, these techniques are generalized to MIMO systems, by either antenna selection or receive beamforming at the receiver. Two eigenbeamforming strategies are proposed and shown to outperform opportunistic beamforming, based on similar feedback information.