Statistical Eigenmode Transmission for the MU-MIMO Downlink in Rician Fading

In this paper, we study the achievable ergodic sum-rate of multiuser multiple-input multiple-output downlink systems in Rician fading channels. We first derive a lower bound on the average signal-to-leakage-and-noise ratio by using the Mullen's inequality, and then use it to analyze the effect of channel mean information on the achievable ergodic sum-rate. A novel statistical-eigenmode space-division multiple-access (SE-SDMA) downlink transmission scheme is then proposed. For this scheme, we derive an exact analytical closed-form expression for the achievable ergodic rate and present tractable tight upper and lower bounds. Based on our analysis, we gain valuable insights into the impact of the system parameters, such as the number of transmit antennas, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and Rician $K$-factor, on the system sum-rate. Results show that the sum-rate converges to a saturation value in the high SNR regime and tends to a lower limit for the low Rician $K$-factor case. In addition, we compare the achievable ergodic sum-rate between SE-SDMA and zero-forcing beamforming with perfect channel state information at the base station. Our results reveal that the rate gap tends to zero in the high Rician $K$-factor regime.