Antenna Decision Method for Downlink Multiuser

MIMO Systems with Receive Antenna Allocation

Tomoki Murakami, Yasushi Takatori, and Masato
Mizoguchi

Fumiaki Maehara
Graduate School of Fundamental Science and Engineering
Waseda University
Shinjuku, Japan

NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
Yokosuka, Japan
E-mail: murakami.tomoki@lab.ntt.co.jp

comparison of received power at each antenna of the receiver

using just a few OFDM signals, so transmission efficiency is
expected to remain high. Moreover, the proposed method
improves the accuracy of antenna decision by receive antenna
allocation at the transmitter while taking antenna decision error
into consideration. The simulation results show that the
proposal offers high accuracy in antenna decision and high
channel capacity due to its minimal overhead.

Abstract This paper proposes an antenna decision method for

downlink multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) with receive antenna
allocation per subcarrier. When receive antenna allocation is
used, each receiver requires the information of the antenna
allocation before receiving the data; for this an overhead signal is
used. The proposed method decreases the overhead by deciding
an antenna with comparison of received power at each antenna of
the receiver. Computer simulations show that the proposed
method offers highly accurate antenna decision and high channel
capacity with one OFDM symbol.

I.

II.

INTRODUCTION

To satisfy the growing demand for wireless communication,

it is necessary to enhance the channel capacity of wireless
systems [1]. Downlink MU-MIMO, in which a transmitter with
multiple antennas simultaneously transmits to multiple
receivers each with a few antennas, is highly promising.
Wireless system standards such as IEEE 802.11ac and 3GPP
LTE advanced address and specify downlink MU-MIMO.
Downlink MU-MIMO mitigates inter-stream interference (ISI)
by pre-coding [2]. Several papers assume that transmitter
antenna number exceeds total number of receiver antenna. In
this scenario, transmitter greatly mitigates ISI by the degree of
freedom (DoF) of its antennas. However, given the rapid rise in
the numbers of wireless devices and antennas, conventional
method for receivers with total antennas over transmitter
antennas is hard to be used because of insufficient of DoF.
Papers [3] proposed a coordinated Tx-Rx block
diagonalization (BD) algorithm for receivers with more
antennas than transmitter antennas. In this algorithm, one data
is transmitted to each user, an initial set of receiver weights is
assumed, and the optimal transmitter and receiver weights are
alternatively recomputed until the solution converges to the one
with minimum power. Downlink MU-MIMO with receive
antenna allocation also has been investigated for single carrier
systems [4]. In order to apply these methods to OFDM systems,
each receiver requires pre-information of receiver weight or
allocated antenna before receiving data. Therefore, since such
pre-information increase in proportion to receiver number or
receive antenna number, transmission efficiency is degraded.
In this paper, we propose an antenna decision method for
downlink MU-MIMO OFDM with receive antenna allocation
per subcarrier. The proposed method decides an antenna by

978-1-4799-7815-1/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

304

ANTENNA DECISION METHOD

We consider a downlink MU-MIMO OFDM system where

transmitter with M antennas communicates with N receivers. In
the following, two antennas are assumed at each receiver for
the simplicity of the explanation. Hn(k)=[h1,n(k)Th2,n(k)T]T2M
denotes channel state information (CSI) of the kth(k1K)
subcarrier between transmitter and nth receiver. h1,n(k) and
h2,n(k) are CSI between transmitter and the first and second
antennas of nth receiver, respectively. In the proposed method,
the transmitter determines receive antenna per subcarrier. CSI
after receive antenna allocation is defined as n(k) which is
chosen from h1,n(k) and h2,n(k) in accordance with the selected
receive antenna. Transmitter must have CSI before data
transmission to calculate pre-coding weight for downlink MUMIMO. The received signals of the kth subcarrier at the nth
receiver, yn(k) is expressed by transmit signal x(k) as

y n (k ) = h n (k )w n (k )xn (k ) +

h (k )w (k )x (k ) + n (k ) , (1)

l =1,l n

where wn(k)N1 is the pre-coding weight of the kth subcarrier

for the nth receiver and nn(k) is the additive white Gaussian
noise vectors of the kth subcarrier with variance of 2. Various
pre-coding algorithms, e.g. channel inversion, are applicable at
the transmitter.
For the overhead reduction, the proposal decides allocated
antenna by comparing the received powers of each antenna at
receiver using one OFDM symbol as training signal. Each
receiver decides allocated antenna with minimum received
power calculated from training signals among all antennas
. Then, we assume that pre-coding weight for training
signal, w'(k), which defines the right singular vector
corresponding to minimum eigenvalue of Hn(k) in order to
mitigate receive power of allocated antenna. However, the

AP-S 2015

capacity improves by 120 % at 10 % CDF value. However,

since this pre-coding cannot perfectly mitigate the received
power, antenna decision error still occurs in response to the
frequency selective fading. Finally, the antenna allocation with
the proposed method achieves the channel capacity close to
optimal because of the very small decision error. In detail, the
proposed method improves the channel capacity by 80% at
10% CDF value.

proposal perfectly cannot decide the allocated antenna because

of frequency selective fading. For improving the accuracy of
antenna decision, this paper also proposes receive antenna
allocation while taking antenna decision error into
consideration. In the proposal, transmitter calculates signal to
interference and noise power ratio (SINR) at the each receiver
calculated by

SINRn (k ) =

h n (k )w n (k )
N

+
2

l =1,l n

h n (k )w l (k )

IV.

(2)

th

where n(k) is CSI of the k subcarrier between transmitter and

estimated antenna of nth receiver which transmitter estimates by
comparison between ||h1,n(k)w'(k)||F2 and ||h2,n(k)w'(k)||F2. The
antenna combination of maximum SINR improves channel
capacity and minimizes antenna decision error.
III.

CONCLUSION

This paper proposed an antenna decision method for

downlink MU-MIMO OFDM with receive antenna allocation
per subcarrier. The proposal realizes antenna decision by
comparing received powers of each antenna at the receiver with
just a few OFDM symbols. By using proposed method, antenna
decision is possible by little overhead. Simulation results
clarified that the proposal achieves to higher antenna decision
accuracy and channel capacity than the conventional method.

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

REFERENCES

We assume that transmitter with four antennas transmits to

four receivers with two antennas. To comply with the IEEE
802.11 standard, the bandwidth and subcarrier number are 20
MHz and 52, respectively. Average signal to noise ratio (SNR)
between transmitter and each receiver is 30 dB. CSI is a
normalized flat fading channel as independent and identically
distributed zero-mean complex Gaussian. As the antenna
allocation method, this paper assumes the greedy algorithm,
which allocates an antenna combination that maximizes the
total SINR from among all combinations. Fig. 1 shows the
cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the channel capacity
per subcarrier by using the coordinated Tx-Rx BD algorithm
[3] and MU-MIMO-OFDM with receive antenna allocation for
the potential analysis of channel capacity. In the coordinated
Tx-Rx BD algorithm, pre-coding and receiver weights are
updated 10 times. Antenna allocation performed randomly or in
optimal manner. Moreover the result of single user MIMO
(SU-MIMO) with time division multiplexing access (TDMA)
is also plotted. From these results, the coordinated Tx-Rx BD
algorithm achieves higher channel capacity than the other
methods. This is because all receiver antennas are possible to
be used. However, its demerit higher computational loads for
receiver weight multiplication and greater overhead for
notification of quantized receiver weight. On the other hand,
the channel capacity of downlink MU-MIMO-OFDM with
receive antenna allocation per subcarrier is similar to that of
coordinated Tx-Rx BD algorithm even though each receiver
uses only one antenna. This is because diversity gains in
effectively obtained by allocating antenna per subcarrier.

[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]

Riichi Kudo, et al., An advanced Wi-Fi data service platform coupled

with a cellular network for future wireless access, IEEE communication
magazine, vol.52, issue:11, pp.46-53, Nov. 2014.
Q.H. Spencer et al., " Zero-forcing methods for downlink spatial
multiplexing in multiuser MIMO channels", IEEE Trans. on Signal
Processing, vol.52, no.2, pp.461-471, Feb. 2004.
M. Codreanu et al., "Joint design of Tx-Rx Beamforers in MIMO
downlink channel", IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, vol.55, no.9,
pp.4639-4655, Sept. 2007.
M. Sadek et al., "Active antenna selection in multiuser MIMO
communications", IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, vol.55, no.4,
pp.1498-1510, April 2007.

100
SU-MIMO (TDMA)
Coordinated Tx-Rx BD algorithm
MU-MIMO with optimal antenna allocation
MU-MIMO with random antenna allocation

CDF [%]

80
60
40
20
0
0

Fig. 1.

4
6
8
10
Channel capacity [bit/s/Hz]

12

CDF of channel capacity per subcarier

100
Proposal

80

CDF [%]

Fig. 2 shows the CDF of the channel capacity per subcarrier

of downlink MU-MIMO-OFDM with receive antenna
allocation by using the proposal. This simulation assumed three
antenna decision variants. The first and second methods do not
use and use the pre-coding of the proposal, respectively. The
last method performs receive antenna allocation at the
transmitter while taking antenna decision error into
consideration. We find that the channel capacity of the method
without pre-coding is greatly degraded because of the many
antenna decision errors created by frequency selective fading.
By using the pre-coding of the proposed method, the channel

60
40

without pre-coding
with pre-coding

20
0
0
Fig. 2.

305

Optimal allocation
Random allocation

4
6
8
10
Channel capacity [bit/s/Hz]

CDF of Channel capacity per subcarrier

12