We consider a MIMO fading broadcast channel and compute achievable ergodic rates when channel state information is acquired at the receivers via downlink training and it is provided to the transmitter by channel state feedback. Unquantized (analog) and quantized (digital) channel state feedback schemes are analyzed and compared under various assumptions. Digital feedback is shown to be potentially superior when the feedback channel uses per channel state coefficient is larger than 1. Also, we show that by proper design of the digital feedback link, errors in the feedback have a minor effect even if simple uncoded modulation is used on the feedback channel. We discuss first the case of an unfaded AWGN feedback channel with orthogonal access and then the case of fading MIMO multi-access (MIMO-MAC). We show that by exploiting the MIMO-MAC nature of the uplink channel, a much better scaling of the feedback channel resource with the number of base station antennas can be achieved. Finally, for the case of delayed feedback, we show that in the realistic case where the fading process has (normalized) maximum Doppler frequency shift 0 ≤ F < 1/2, a fraction 1 − 2F of the optimal multiplexing gain is achievable. The general conclusion of this work is that very significant downlink throughput is achievable with simple and efficient channel state feedback, provided that the feedback link is properly designed.

We consider the time correlated multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast channel where the transmitter has imperfect knowledge of the current channel state, in addition to delayed channel state information. By representing the quality of the current channel state information as P −α for the signalto-noise ratio P and some constant α ≥ 0, we characterize the optimal degree of freedom region for this more general two-user MISO broadcast correlated channel. The essential ingredients of the proposed scheme lie in the quantization and multicast of the overheard interferences, while broadcasting new private messages. Our proposed scheme smoothly bridges between the scheme recently proposed by Maddah-Ali and Tse with no current state information and a simple zero-forcing beamforming with perfect current state information.

International audienceThe exponentially increasing demand for wireless data services requires a massive network densification that is neither economically nor ecologically viable with the current cellular system architectures. A promising solution to this problem is the concept of small-cell networks (SCNs), which is founded by the idea of a very dense deployment of self-organizing, low-cost, low-power, base stations (BSs). Although SCNs have the potential to significantly increase the capacity of cellular networks while reducing their energy consumption, they pose many new challenges to the optimal system design. We show in this article how a large system analysis based on random matrix theory (RMT) can provide tight and tractable approximations of key performance measures of SCNs

We consider a MIMO fading broadcast channel where the fading channel coefficients are constant over time-frequency blocks that span a coherent time × a coherence bandwidth. In closed-loop systems, channel state information at transmitter (CSIT) is acquired by the downlink training sent by the base station and an explicit feedback from each user terminal. In open-loop systems, CSIT is obtained by exploiting uplink training and channel reciprocity. We use a tight closed-form lower bound on the ergodic achievable rate in the presence of CSIT errors in order to optimize the overall system throughput, by taking explicitly into account the overhead due to channel estimation and channel state feedback. Based on three time-frequency block models inspired by actual systems, we provide some useful guidelines for the overall system optimization. In particular, digital (quantized) feedback is found to offer a substantial advantage over analog (unquantized) feedback.

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