MU-MIMO-OFDMA SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MULTI-RANK CQI COMPUTATION AND PRECODER SELECTION

• US 20110243017A1
• Filed: 04/05/2011
• Published: 10/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/05/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NEC Corporation
• Original Assignee: NEC Laboratories America Inc (NEC Corporation)
• Inventors: YUE, GUOSEN, JIANG, MEILONG, RANGARAJAN, SAMPATH, KHOJASTEPOUR, MOHAMMAD A., PRASAD, NARAYAN
• Granted Patent: US 8,654,663 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/252
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0452 Multi-user MIMO systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0465 taking power constraints at power amplifier or emission constraints, e.g. constant modulus, into account
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0486 taking channel rank into account
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/346 distributing total power among users or channels
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/20 Control channels or signalling for resource management
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/542 using measured or perceived quality

Abstract

Methods and systems for determining attributes of communication channels of MU-MIMO users in an OFDMA system are disclosed. One method comprises receiving from a base station, for at least one sub-band of contiguous sub-carriers, an indication of an estimate of or an upper-bound on a total number of streams that are co-scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band. In addition, the method further comprises determining one or more signal quality measures for the at-least one sub-band based on the estimate of or the upper-bound on the total number of streams that are scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band. Moreover, an indication of the one or more signal quality measures is transmitted to the base station.

Claims

1. A method for determining attributes of communication channels of multi-user (MU)-multiple input multiple output (MIMO) users in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing based multiple access (OFDMA) system, the method comprising:

receiving from a base station, for at least one sub-band of contiguous sub-carriers, an indication of an estimate of or an upper-bound on a total number of streams (S) that are co-scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band;

determining one or more signal quality measures for the at-least one sub-band based on the estimate of or the upper-bound on the total number of streams that are scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band; and

transmitting to the base station an indication of the one or more signal quality measures.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the signal quality measures are signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs), the indication of the one or more signal quality measures is an indication of one or more channel quality indices (CQIs) that are based on the SINRs, wherein the method further comprises:

determining a precoder matrix for the at-least one sub-band based on the estimate of or the upper-bound on the total number of streams that are co-scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band, wherein the transmitting further comprises transmitting to the base station an indication of the precoder matrix.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the receiving further comprises receiving a suggested precoder rank from the base station, and wherein the determining the one or more SINRs and the determining the precoder matrix are based on the suggested rank.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the determining one or more SINRs comprises calculating, for the at least one sub-band,

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the indication of the precoder matrix is an indication of a precoder matrix index (PMI) and wherein the determining the precoder matrix comprises calculating, for the at least one sub-band,

6. The method of claim 2, wherein the indication of the precoder matrix is an indication of a precoder matrix index (PMI) and wherein the determining the precoder matrix comprises calculating, for the at least one sub-band,

7. The method of claim 2, wherein the indication of the precoder matrix is an indication of a precoder matrix index (PMI) and wherein the determining the precoder matrix comprises calculating, for the at least one sub-band,

8. The method of claim 2, wherein the indication of the precoder matrix is an indication of a precoder matrix index (PMI) and wherein the determining the precoder matrix comprises calculating, for the at least one sub-band,

9. The method of claim 2, wherein the indication of the precoder matrix is an indication of a precoder matrix index (PMI) and wherein the determining the precoder matrix comprises calculating, for the at least one sub-band,

10. The method of claim 2, wherein the indication of the precoder matrix is an indication of a precoder matrix index (PMI) and wherein the determining the precoder matrix comprises calculating, for the at least one sub-band,

11. The method of claim 2, wherein the receiving further comprises receiving a companion precoder rank for a co-scheduled user from the base station.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the determining the precoder matrix further comprises determining an additional precoder matrix for the co-scheduled user based on the companion precoder rank and wherein the transmitting further comprises transmitting an indication of the additional precoder matrix to the base station.

13. The method of claim 2, wherein the receiving further comprises receiving an indication of a respective number of streams co-scheduled by each interfering base station in a set of interfering base stations and an indication of a respective number of precoder dimensions that each interfering base station in the set abstains from utilizing to schedule the streams of the respective interfering base station, wherein the determining the precoder matrix further comprises determining a respective worst-companion precoder matrix for each of the interfering base stations resulting in a highest SINR, and wherein the transmitting further comprises transmitting indications of the worst-companion precoder matrices.

14. The method of claim 2, wherein the indication of the precoder matrix is a precoder matrix index (PMI), wherein said transmitting further comprises transmitting one PMI per sub-band.

15. The method of claim 2, wherein the indication of the precoder matrix is a precoder matrix index (PMI), wherein said transmitting further comprises transmitting to the base station only one PMI for all available channels and wherein said transmitted PMI is determined by

calculating a sum rate for each sub-band;

selecting a precoding matrix from C_r having a highest sum rate of the sum-rates calculated for each sub-band;

re-computing CQIs for each sub-band other than the sub-band having the highest sum rate based on the selected precoding matrix, wherein said transmitting further comprises transmitting the re-computed CQIs to the base station.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the signal quality measures are signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs) and wherein the indication is the determined SINRs.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the signal quality measures are signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs), wherein said determining further comprises determining channel quality indices (CQIs) by employing a lookup table with the SINRs and wherein the indication is the channel quality indices.

18. A receiver system for determining precoders for communication channels of multi-user (MU)-multiple input multiple output (MIMO) users in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing based multiple access (OFDMA) system comprising:

a receiver configured to receive from a base station, for at least one sub-band of contiguous sub-carriers, an indication of an estimate of or an upper-bound on a total number of streams that are co-scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band;

a processor configured to determine a precoder matrix for the at-least one sub-band based on the estimate of or the upper-bound on the total number of streams that are scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band; and

a transmitter configured to transmit to the base station an indication of the precoder matrix.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the processor is further configured to determine one or more signal quality measures for the at-least one sub-band based on the estimate of or the upper-bound on the total number of streams that are scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band and wherein the transmitter is further configured to transmit to the base station an indication of the one or more signal quality measures.

20. A method for scheduling multi-user (MU)-multiple input multiple output (MIMO) users in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing based multiple access (OFDMA) system comprising:

transmitting, for at least one sub-band of contiguous sub-carriers, to each prospective user an indication of an estimate of or an upper-bound on a total number of streams that are co-scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band to permit the prospective users to account for potential interference resulting from transmissions to co-scheduled users;

receiving from each prospective user an indication of at least one preferred precoder matrix and one or more signal quality indications that are based on the estimate of or an upper-bound on the total number of streams that are co-scheduled by the base station on the at least one sub-band;

selecting a set of the prospective users and determining scheduling information for each of the selected users based on the precoder matrices and the signal quality measures; and

transmitting the respective scheduling information to the selected users.