Energy-efficient scheduling for downlink multi-user MIMO

Multi-user MIMO is the enabling technology for LTE-Advanced systems to meet IMT-Advanced targets. The gain of multi-user MIMO is achieved partially through advanced user-grouping, user-scheduling, and precoding. Traditionally, multiuser MIMO scheduling focuses solely on spectral-efficiency [1]. That is, the scheduler will strike to balance the cell-edge user spectral-efficiency as well as the cell-average spectral-efficiency. Similar to spectral-efficiency, energy-efficiency is becoming increasingly important for wireless communications. The energy efficiency is measured by a classical measure, “throughput per Joule”, while both RF transmit power and device electronic circuit power consumptions are considered. In this paper, an energy-efficient proportional-fair scheduling is proposed for downlink multi-user MIMO systems. To specific, the scheduling algorithm is proposed to balance cell-edge energy-efficiency and the cell-average energy-efficiency. The energy-efficient proportional-fair metric is defined and the optimal power allocation maximizing the performance measure is identified. System level evaluation suggests that multi-user MIMO could improve the energy-efficiency of a wireless communication system significantly.