Predictive downlink beamforming for wideband CDMA over Rayleigh-fading channels

A new approach to adaptive downlink beamforming to combat fast Rayleigh fading is presented. In this approach, the antennas at the base transceiver station form transmit beam patterns according to the prediction of downlink channels. The channel prediction is a linear prediction based on the autoregressive model, which is downsampled to extend the memory span given fixed model order. For a wideband code-division multiple-access downlink, pre-RAKE transmission is employed to achieve the multipath diversity gain. In particular, we combine pseudoinverse directions of arrival beamforming with pre-RAKE transmission to alleviate self-interference. The beamforming weights are adjusted within a downlink frame to compensate the predicted fading. We give measures of the prediction and beamforming performance and evaluate the impact of prediction errors on the downlink. Ray tracing simulations in a three-dimensional urban physical model show that the predictive downlink beamforming outperforms the conventional beamforming over Rayleigh-fading channels.