Scheduling and Pre-Conditioning in Multi-User MIMO TDD Systems

The downlink transmission in multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems has been extensively studied from both communication-theoretic and information-theoretic perspectives. Most of these papers assume perfect/imperfect channel knowledge. In general, the problem of channel training and estimation is studied separately. However, in interference-limited communication systems with high mobility, this problem is tightly coupled with the problem of maximizing throughput of the system. In this paper, scheduling and pre-conditioning based schemes in the presence of reciprocal channel are considered to address this. In the case of homogeneous users, a scheduling scheme is proposed and an improved lower bound on the sum capacity is derived. The problem of choosing training sequence length to maximize net throughput of the system is studied. In the case of heterogeneous users, a modified pre-conditioning method is proposed and an optimized pre-conditioning matrix is derived. This method is combined with a scheduling scheme to further improve net achievable weighted-sum rate.