Low-Complexity User Scheduling in the Downlink Massive MU-MIMO System with Linear Precoding

In this paper, we investigate low-complexity user scheduling schemes for the downlink (DL) massive multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system, where an M-antenna (M is very large) base station (BS) serves K (K > 2) N-antenna (N > 1) users with linear transceivers. Establishing the theoretical foundation of our scheduling schemes, we first investigate the asymptotic sum-rates of this system with both singular value decomposition (SVD) and regularized zero-forcing (RZF) precoders. In particular, we assume that both M and N go to infinity with a bounded ratio to perform the theoretical derivations with random matrix theory (RMT). In addition, the influence of imperfect channel estimation is also considered. Interestingly, the analysis indicates the existence of an optimal number of served users K* in terms of asymptotic sum-rate, which motivates our low complexity user scheduling schemes. Unlike the conventional schemes with complicated computations and instantaneous channel state information, our user scheduling schemes are based on semi-analytical solutions with only statistic CSI. Simulation results validate our theoretical derivations and show the advantages of our schemes in the massive MU-MIMO system.