Antenna and User Subset Selection in Downlink Multiuser Orthogonal Space-Division Multiplexing

Abstract

Block diagonalization (BD) and successive optimization (SO) are two suboptimal but more practical (compared to dirty paper coding (DPC)) orthogonal linear precoding techniques for the downlink of multiuser MIMO systems. Since the numbers of users supported by BD or SO for a given number of transmit antennas are limited, BD or SO should be combined with scheduling so that a subset of users is selected at a given time slot while meeting the dimensionality requirements of these techniques. On the other hand, receive antenna selection (RAS) is a promising hardware complexity reduction technique. In this paper, we consider user scheduling in conjunction with receive antenna selection. Since exhaustive search is computationally prohibitive, we propose simplified and suboptimal user scheduling algorithms for both BD and SO. For BD, we propose capacity and Frobenius-norm based suboptimal algorithms with the objective of sum rate maximization. Starting from an empty set, each step of proposed algorithms adds the best user from the set of users not selected yet until the desired number of users have been selected. Proposed receive antenna selection works in conjunction with user scheduling to further enhance the sum rate of BD. For SO, a Frobenius-norm based low complexity algorithm is proposed, which maximizes the ratio of the squared Frobenius norm of the equivalent channel (projected to the joint null space of the previously selected users) to the sum of the squared Frobenius norms of the previously selected users’ preprocessed channels. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms achieve sum rates close to exhaustive search algorithms with much reduced complexity. We also show that in addition to reduced hardware complexity at the receiver, antenna selection enhances multiuser diversity gain that is achieved with user scheduling.