Quantized vs. Analog Channel Feedback for FDD Massive MIMO Systems with Multiple-Antenna Users

In this paper, we consider the problem of channel feedback in massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. For the downlink scenario, we present a detailed comparison between the performance of the quantized and the analog channel feedback schemes for the case of having multiple antenna users. Both schemes’ performance is evaluated by deriving an upper bound on the rate gap between the rate of the system with perfect channel state information (CSI) and with imperfect CSI for both feedback schemes. We compare the two schemes, namely, quantized channel feedback and analog channel feedback, under the same resources allocated for channel feedback for a fair comparison. Moreover, we consider two different downlink transmission schemes; the first one does not consider power allocation across the streams and the second one does power allocation (water-filling) across the streams. Our results show that the analog feedback scheme performs better in the low signal to noise (SNR) region when performing power allocation across the multiple data streams. However, the quantized channel feedback scheme performs better at the high SNR region, where the quantized CSI can provide a better approximation of the actual CSI. Finally, simulation results are presented to verify our theoretical analysis and demonstrate our conclusions.