Wireless Communication system with feedback and method therefor

• US 6,898,250 B2
• Filed: 04/09/2001
• Issued: 05/24/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 04/07/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
• Inventors: Hwang, Keun-chul, Lee, Kwang-bok
• Primary Examiner(s): Ghebretinsae, Temesghen
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ahn, Sam K.
• Application Number:
  US09/828,473
• Publication Number:
  US 20020006168A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,506 Days
• Field of Search: 375/267, 375/259, 375/260, 375/144, 375/221, 375/148, 375/349, 375/299, 375/347
• US Class Current: 375/267
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0634 Antenna weights or vector/matrix coefficients
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0663 using vector or matrix manipulations

Abstract

A wireless communication system with feedback and a method therefore, wherein the wireless communication system, which has a plurality of transmitting antennas and a plurality of receiving antennas through which signals are transmitted and received, respectively, includes: a transmitter that restores feedback information from a predetermined feedback signal, weights an information signal with the restored feedback information, and converts the weighted information signal to a radio frequency signal in order to transmit the radio frequency signal; and a receiver that receives the radio frequency signal to estimate the state of a channel, through which the radio frequency signal is transmitted, calculates a weight of a dimensionality corresponding to the number of the transmitting antennas, approximates the weight as lower-dimensional one to extract feedback information, and converts the feedback information into a radio frequency signal to send the radio frequency signal to the transmitter.

Claims

1. A wireless communication system including a plurality of transmitting antennas and a plurality of receiving antennas through which signals are transmitted and received, the wireless communication system comprising:

a transmitter that restores a first feedback information from a predetermined feedback signal, weights an information signal with the first feedback information, and converts the weighted information signal to a first radio frequency signal in order to transmit the first radio frequency signal; and

a receiver that receives the first radio frequency signal to estimate a state of a channel through which the first radio frequency signal is transmitted, calculates a first weight of a first dimensionality corresponding to a number of the plurality of transmitting antennas from the estimated channel state, approximates the first weight to a second weight having a second dimensionality the second dimensionality being lower than the first dimensionality, to extract a second feedback information, and converts the second feedback information into a second radio frequency signal to send the second radio frequency signal to the transmitter.

2. The wireless communication system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the receiver comprises:

a baseband processor that extracts a baseband signal from the first radio frequency signal and estimates the channel state;

a feedback information approximation unit that calculates the first weight of the first dimensionality, which maximizes a predetermined objective function, and approximates the first weight to the second weight to extract the second feedback information; and

a feedback unit that sends the second feedback information back to the transmitter.

3. The wireless communication system as claimed in claim 2, wherein the predetermined objective function is P=W^HH^HHW, where a matrix H denotes the channel state, a vector W denotes the first weight, and the superscript H denotes a Hermitian operator, the feedback information approximation unit calculates an optimum first weight W_optthat maximizes the predetermined objective function and approximates the optimum first weight W_opt to an optimum second weight constituted by a predetermined basis vectors to extract the feedback information.

4. The wireless communication system as claimed in claim 3, wherein W_opt is an eigenvector corresponding to a maximum eigenvalue of H^HH in the predetermined objective function.

5. The wireless communication system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the transmitter comprises:

a feedback information restoring unit that restores the first feedback information from the second radio frequency signal received from the receiver;

a baseband processor that encodes and modulates the information signal;

a weighting unit that multiplies the first feedback information by an output signal of the baseband processor; and

a radio frequency processor that converts an output signal of the weighting unit to the first radio frequency signal to output the first radio frequency signal.

6. The wireless communication system as claimed in claim 5, wherein the predetermined objective function is P=W^HH^HHW, where a matrix H denotes the channel state, a vector W denotes the first weight, and the superscript H denotes a Hermitian operator, the feedback information restoring unit calculates an optimum first weight W_opt that maximizes the predetermined objective function and approximates the optimum first weight W_opt to an optimum second weight constituted by a predetermined basis vectors to extract the feedback information.

7. The wireless communication system as claimed in claim 5, wherein W_opt is an eigenvector corresponding to a maximum eigenvalue of H^HH in the predetermined objective function.

8. A wireless communication system including a plurality of transmitting antennas and a plurality of receiving antennas through which signals are transmitted and received, respectively, the wireless communication system comprising:

a transmitter that restores a first feedback information from a predetermined feedback signal, weights an information signal with the first feedback information, and converts the weighted information signal into a first radio frequency signal in order to transmit the first radio frequency signal; and

a receiver that receives the first radio frequency signal to estimate the state of a channel through which the first radio frequency signal is transmitted, selects a number of basis vectors and their coefficients corresponding to a dimensionality of approximation among the basis vectors whose number corresponds to a number of the plurality of transmitting antennas, obtains a plurality of weights from the selected basis vectors and coefficients, extracts a weight that maximizes a predetermined objective function obtained from the estimated channel state among the plurality of weights as a second feedback information, and converts the second feedback information into a second radio frequency signal in order to send the second radio frequency signal to the transmitter as the predetermined feedback signal.

9. The wireless communication system as claimed in claim 8, wherein the receiver comprises:

a baseband processor that extracts a baseband signal from the first radio frequency signal and estimates the channel state;

a feedback information approximation unit that selects the number of basis vectors and their coefficients corresponding to the dimensionality of approximation among the basis vectors whose number corresponds to the number of the transmitting antennas, obtains the plurality of weights from the selected basis vectors and coefficients, extracts the weight that maximizes the predetermined objective function obtained from the channel state among the plurality of weights as the second feedback information; and

a feedback unit that sends the second feedback information back to the transmitter.

10. The wireless communication system as claimed in claim 9, wherein the predetermined objective function is P_i=W_i^HH^HHW_i, where a matrix H denotes the channel state, a vector W_i is a weight calculated from i-th selected basis vector and coefficient, and the superscript H is a Hermitian operator, the feedback information approximation unit extracts the weight W_i that maximizes the predetermined objective function as the second feedback information.

11. A wireless communication method in which, when M radio frequency signals transmitted from a transmitter are received through multiple paths, a feedback information is extracted from received signals and the extracted feedback information is sent to the transmitter, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) estimating states of channels of the multiple paths from the received signals;

(b) calculating a weight, which is fed back into the transmitter and multiplied by the M radio frequency signals, from the estimated channel state;

(c) approximating the weight to a weight of dimension S which is less than M and quantizing coefficients for the approximated dimension; and

(d) feeding basis vectors and their quantized coefficients or indices that identify the basis vectors and their quantized coefficients of the approximated dimension back to the transmitter.

12. The method as claimed in claim 11, wherein, in the step (b), when the number of multiple paths is L, W_opt that maximizes a predetermined objective function expressed by P=W^HH^HHW is extracted as the feedback information, where a matrix H having a size of L×

M denotes the channel state, a vector W having magnitude of M denotes the weight, and the superscript H denotes a Hermitian operator.

13. The method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the step (c) comprises the steps of:

(c1) determining the basis vectors that represent the M dimensions;

(c2) calculating the coefficients corresponding to the basis vectors from a dot product of the W_opt and each basis vector;

(c3) selecting S coefficients among the coefficients calculated in the step (c2) in order of magnitude and selecting the basis vectors corresponding to the selected S coefficients; and

(c4) quantizing the selected coefficients.

14. The method as claimed in claim 11, when the feedback signal includes the basis vectors and the quantized coefficients in the step (d), further comprising the steps of:

(e) extracting the basis vectors and the quantized coefficients from the feedback information received from the transmitter;

(f) restoring feedback information from the extracted basis vectors and the quantized coefficients;

(g) weighting an information signal to be transmitted with the restored feedback information; and

(h) transmitting the weighted information signal.

15. The method as claimed in claim 11, when the feedback information includes the indices in the step (d), further comprising the steps of:

(e) storing the basis vectors and the quantized coefficients of S dimensions and indices identifying the basis vectors and the quantized coefficients, respectively, in the transmitter;

(f) extracting the indices from a received feedback signal and basis vectors and quantized coefficients identified by the indices among the basis vectors and the quantized coefficients stored in the step (e);

(g) restoring the feedback information from the extracted basis vectors and the quantized coefficients;

(h) weighting an information signal to be transmitted with the restored feedback information; and

(i) transmitting the weighted information signal.

16. A wireless communication method in which, when M radio frequency signals transmitted from a transmitter are received through multiple paths, a feedback information is extracted from received signals and the extracted feedback information is sent to the transmitter, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) estimating states of channels comprising the multiple paths from the received signals;

(b) determining basis vectors that represent M dimensions;

(c) selecting S basis vectors among the determined basis vectors, where S is less than M;

(d) selecting one of N quantization coefficients for each basis vector;

(e) obtaining feedback information W_i from the selected basis vectors and quantization coefficients; and

(f) sending W_i or an index indicating W_i back to the transmitter when a predetermined objective function P_i generated from W_i and the estimated channel H reaches a maximum.

17. The method as claimed in claim 16, wherein the predetermined objective function P_i is expressed by P_i=W_i^HH^HHW_i where the superscript H is a Hermitian operator.

18. The method as claimed in claim 16, wherein, when the predetermined objective function P_i does not reach a maximum, the steps (e) and (f) are repeated for _MC_S cases in which another S basis vectors are selected from the M basis vectors and for N^S cases in which another quantization coefficient is selected for each of the selected S basis vectors.

19. The method as claimed in claim 16, when the extracted feedback information includes W_i in the step (f), further comprising the steps of:

(g) extracting W_i from the received feedback signal;

(h) weighting the information signal to be transmitted with the extracted W_i; and

(i) transmitting the weighted information signal.

20. The method as claimed in claim 16, when the feedback information includes the index in the step (f), further comprising the steps of:

(g) storing selectable W_i and index indicating W_i in the transmitter;

(h) extracting the index from a received feedback signal and W_i identified by the index;

(i) weighting an information signal to be transmitted with the extracted W_i; and

(j) transmitting the weighted information signal.