Acquiring Partial CSI for Spatially Selective Transmission by Instantaneous Channel Norm Feedback

In the design of next-generation multiuser communication systems, multiple-antenna transmission is an essential part providing additional spatial degrees of freedom and allowing efficient use of resources. A major limiting factor in the resource allocation is the amount of channel state information (CSI) available at the transmitter, particularly in multiuser systems where the feedback from each user terminal must be limited. Herein, we show that the Euclidean norm of the instantaneous channel, when combined with long-term channel statistics provides sufficient information for the transmitter to efficiently utilize multiuser diversity in time, frequency, and space. We consider the downlink of a communication system where the base station has multiple transmit antennas whereas each user terminal has a single receive antenna. The CSI provided by channel statistics and feedback of the norm of the instantaneous channel vector is studied in depth for correlated Rayleigh and Ricean fading channels, within a minimum mean-square error (MMSE) estimation framework. An asymptotic analysis (high instantaneous SNR) is presented which shows that channel realizations with large channel norm provide additional spatial CSI at the transmitter. This makes the proposed scheme ideal for multiuser diversity transmission schemes, where resources are only allocated to users experiencing favorable channel conditions.