How Many Transmit Antennas to Use in a MIMO Interference Channel

The problem of finding the optimal number of data streams to transmit in a multi-user MIMO scenario, where both the transmitters and receivers are equipped with multiple antennas is considered. Without channel state information at any transmitter, with a zero-forcing receiver each user is shown to transmit a single data stream to maximize its own outage capacity in the presence of sufficient number of users. Transmitting a single data stream is also shown to be optimal in terms of maximizing the sum of the outage capacities in the presence of sufficient number of users.