Feedback bit reduction for antenna selection methods in wireless systems

A well known method to reduce the intrinsic complexity of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems is to choose a subset of available antennas which have stronger links than the others, in order to perform the specified MIMO algorithm. The data resulted from the antenna selection process (at the receiver side) is sent back to the transmitter side via a feedback channel. There seems to be a need to reduce the number of feedback bits, specially when the number of antennas is not small. In this paper, we investigate the problem of reducing the number of feedback bits in antenna selection techniques. We've proposed two methods using vector quantization techniques to perform feedback bit reduction. The performance of these two methods is investigated by simulations in both correlated and uncorrelated wireless channels.