Bidirectional Sum-Power Minimization Beamforming in Dynamic TDD MIMO Networks

Employing dynamic time division duplexing can increase the system-wide spectral efficiency of applications with varying and unbalanced uplink and downlink data traffic requirements. However, in order to achieve this efficiency gain, it is necessary to manage the effects of cross-link interference, which are generated among cells transmitting in opposite link directions. This paper considers bidirectional sum-power minimization beamforming as a means to deal with this cross-link interference, by forcing a minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio constraint for both uplink and downlink. We propose two iterative approaches to solve this beamforming problem. The first approach assumes centralized processing and requires the availability of global channel state information. The second approach is performed in a decentralized manner, based on the alternating direction method of multipliers and requires only local channel state information and reduced signaling load. Both approaches are shown to converge to a minimum network power expenditure, whereas close-to-optimum performance can be obtained when limiting the number of iterations.