Layered Block Diagonalization for Base Station Cooperated Multiuser

MIMO with Partial Channel State Information Feedback

Kenichi Higuchi
Department of Electrical Engineering, Tokyo University of Science
2641 Yamazaki, Noda, Chiba, 278-8510 Japan
E-mail: higuchik@rs.noda.tus.ac.jp


AbstractThis paper proposes a layered block diagonalization
(BD) precoding method for downlink multiuser multiple-input
multiple-output (MIMO) transmission employing multiple base
station (BS) cooperation where some of the instantaneous channel
state information (CSI) feedback between the user equipment
and the respective BSs are missing depending on the location of
the user equipment. In the layered BD method, the inter-user
interference from the channel for which the set of BSs knows the
instantaneous CSI is eliminated as in the conventional BD
method with perfect CSI feedback. However, since some of the
instantaneous CSI is not obtained at the BSs, the inter-user
interference from these channels without the knowledge of the
instantaneous CSI is allowed. To minimize the inter-user
interference from the BS-unknown channel and to utilize fully
the available transmission power, the layered BD method
adaptively controls the set of BSs used for the signal transmission
for a particular user in user-by-user manner, based on the CSI
feedback state of that user and the other users. The layered BD
method maximizes the power efficiency of the respective users in
a partial instantaneous CSI feedback scenario, while maintaining
the nulling of the inter-user interference in all of the BS-known
MIMO channels. A computer simulation is conducted to verify
the effectiveness of the proposed method from the viewpoint of
the achievable throughput. The results show that the proposed
layered BD method expands the user throughput region
compared to that of the conventional approaches when
accommodating the partial instantaneous CSI feedback scenario.
I. INTRODUCTION
Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission is
very beneficial in enhancing the frequency efficiency [1, 2].
Since the MIMO capacity is increased as the numbers of
transmitter and receiver antennas are increased and while the
allowable numbers of these antennas per base station (BS) and
user terminal are limited, employing a combination of BS
cooperation and multiuser MIMO is under extensive
investigation [3-7]. In downlink multiuser MIMO, precoding
based on the channel state information (CSI) at the BS
transmitter is essential to suppress the inter-user interference.
The linear block diagonalization (BD)-based precoding method
[8] is known to achieve a relatively high capacity with limited
complexity. To achieve BD of the channel matrix, the BS
should know the instantaneous CSI (complex fading condition)
of all the combinations of transmitter and receiver antennas.
In many recent cellular systems such as the Long-Term
Evolution (LTE) system by the 3rd Generation Partnership
Project (3GPP) [9], a cell-interior user measures and feeds back
the instantaneous CSI between that user and the serving BS for
scheduling and link adaptation. A cell-edge user measures and
feeds back the CSI between that user and a neighboring BS
additionally for the purpose of handover, etc. A major reason
why the cell-interior users do not feedback the instantaneous
CSI to the neighboring BSs is due to the fact that radio
resources for the downlink reference (pilot) signal, which are
used for CSI measurement at the user terminal, are limited (this
is also true for LTE-Advanced [7], where the reference signal
for CSI measurement is transmitted very sparsely in the time
and frequency domains). Therefore, accurate CSI estimation
between the cell-interior users and neighboring BSs is
impossible due to the long propagation distance. The limited
capacity of the uplink feedback channels is another major
reason. Therefore, it makes sense to consider the BS-
cooperative MIMO scheme with the above-mentioned CSI
feedback constraint.
As the simplest example, two-cooperating BSs are
illustrated in Fig. 1. A user at a distance to the cell edge of less
than A feeds back the instantaneous CSI between that user and
both BSs. In the paper, we denote the set of these users as full
CSI users. Meanwhile, a user at a distance to the cell edge that
is longer than A feeds back the instantaneous CSI between that
user and nearest BS and the long-term CSI (thus average path
loss) to the other BS. We denote the set of users that feeds back
only the instantaneous CSI to the nearest BS as limited CSI
users. In this model, Kusashima et al. [10] proposed orthogonal
switching of single-BS MIMO for limited CSI users and
cooperative-BS MIMO for full CSI users. In [11] and [12],
application to interference coordination was considered, in
which single-BS MIMO is basically applied but the inter-cell
interference for the full CSI users is suppressed using a part of
the degrees of the freedom of the spatial channel.
BS 1
Limited CSI user
region
BS 2
Cell edge
A A
Full CSI user
region
Limited CSI user
region

Figure 1. CSI feedback model.
In this paper, we consider cooperative-BS multiuser MIMO
based on multi-cell processing (MCP) [5] in which the
transmission information sent to a user is shared by the
cooperating BSs. MCP utilizes the degrees of freedom of the
spatial channel more efficiently than the orthogonal
transmission in [10] and the interference coordination in [11]
International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications, Wireless Communications Symposium
978-1-4673-0009-4/12/$26.00 2012 IEEE 1071
and [12]. More specifically, this paper proposes a layered BD
method. In this method, the inter-user interference from the
channel for which the set of BSs knows the instantaneous CSI
is eliminated as in the conventional BD method with perfect
CSI feedback [8]. However, since some of the instantaneous
CSI is not obtained at the BSs, the inter-user interference from
these channels without the knowledge of the instantaneous CSI
is allowed. To minimize the inter-user interference from the
BS-unknown channel and to utilize fully the available
transmission power, the layered BD method adaptively controls
the set of BSs used for the signal transmission for a particular
user in user-by-user manner, based on the CSI feedback state
of that user and the other users. The layered BD method
maximizes the power efficiency of the respective users in this
partial instantaneous CSI feedback scenario, while maintaining
the nulling of the inter-user interference in all of the BS-known
MIMO channels. The average path loss information is used for
the appropriate rate decision taking into account the inter-user
interference observed at the limited CSI users.
The reminder of the paper is organized as follows. First,
Section II describes the proposed layered BD method. Then,
Section III presents simulation results that show the
effectiveness of the proposed method compared to the
conventional approaches. Section IV concludes the paper.
II. LAYERED BD METHOD
Let us assume L cooperating BSs. The number of
transmitter antennas per BS is N. The number of receiver
antennas per user is M. There are Q = 2
L
1 patterns regarding
the sets of BSs for which the instantaneous CSI is fed back. We
assume that in the i-th (i = 1, 2, ..., Q) CSI feedback pattern, the
set of BS indexes for which the instantaneous CSI is fed back
is denoted as
i
{1, 2, ..., L}. |
i
| 0 and
i

j
, i j are
assumed. If |
i
| = L, CSI feedback pattern i represents the full
CSI feedback; otherwise, it represents limited CSI feedback.
The number of users belonging to CSI feedback pattern i is U
i
.
The total number of users, U
total
, to be spatially multiplexed
should satisfy
total
1
Q
i
i
LN
U U
M
=
= s
_
. (1)
The number of users for which all or a part of the instantaneous
CSI of BS l
i
is known at the BSs is denoted as
1,| | 0
( )
i j
Q
i j
j
U U
= =
=
_

. (2)
The U
i
M N-dimensional matrix, H
i,l
, represents the channel
matrix between BS l (l = 1, 2, ..., L) and all U
i
users belonging
to CSI feedback pattern i. When l
i
, H
i,l
is not known at the
BSs.
Let us consider the precoding for user k (k = 1, 2, ..., U
i
) in
CSI feedback pattern i. Hereafter, that user is denoted as user (i,
k). Since the BSs only know the instantaneous CSI from BS
[
i
]
b
(b = 1, 2, ..., |
i
|) to user (i, k), where [
i
]
b
is the b-th
element of
i
, it is desirable to transmit a signal to user (i, k)
from BS [
i
]
1
, ..., [
i
]
|i|
only. This is also the baseline of the
proposed layered BD method. The U(
i
)M |
i
|N-dimensional
overall channel matrix from BS [
i
]
1
, ..., [
i
]
|i|
to all users
belonging to CSI feedback pattern j, where |
i

j
| 0, is
denoted as H
i
. Based on the BD principle, the precoding
matrix for user (i, k) is determined so that the transmission
signal from BS [
i
]
b
(b = 1, 2, ..., |
i
|) to user (i, k) does not
interfere with all the other users for which the instantaneous
CSI to BS [
i
]
b
is known at the BSs. One way to calculate such
a precoding matrix is the muted channel matrix-based method
[13]. The muting method first sets all the unknown H
i,l
, i, l

i
, to zero matrix O (muting operation). The (U(
i
)1)M
|
i
|N-dimensional overall muted channel matrix, which is
generated by performing muting operation on H
i
followed by
the removal of the channel coefficient components of user (i, k),
is represented as A
i,k
. We assume that matrix A
i,k
is factored
based on singular value decomposition (SVD) as
, , , (1), , (0), ,
[ ][ ]
i i i i i
H
k k k k k
= A U O V V

, (3)
where U
i,k
is the unitary matrix and [V
(1),i,k
V
(0),i,k
] is the |
i
|N
|
i
|N-dimensional unitary matrix in which V
(1),i,k
and V
(0),i,k

have (U(
i
)1)M and F
i,k
= |
i
|N(U(
i
)1)M columns,
respectively. Matrix A
i,k
is the (U(
i
)1)M (U(
i
)1)M-
dimensional diagonal matrix with nonnegative real numbers on
the diagonal, which represent the singular values of A
i,k
.
Matrix V
(0),i,k
is used as the precoding matrix for user (i, k) for
the layered BD. Assuming M
i,k,l
as the precoding matrix for the
layered BD at the BS l for user (i, k), M
i,k,l
is determined as
1 2 | |
, ,[ ] , ,[ ] , ,[ ] (0), ,
, ,
[ ]
,
i i i i
i
H H H H
i k i k i k k
H
i k l i
l
=
= e
M M M V
M O
"

. (4)
For example, when |
i
| = 3 and
i

j
= {[
i
]
1
, [
i
]
2
}, for the
users in CSI feedback pattern j, the precoding matrix of user (i,
k) satisfy
1 1 2 2 3
1 1 2 2
,[ ] , ,[ ] ,[ ] , ,[ ] , ,[ ]
,[ ] , ,[ ] ,[ ] , ,[ ]
i i i i i
i i i i
j i k j i k i k
j i k j i k
+ +
= + =
H M H M OM
H M H M O


. (5)
Eq. (5) means that the transmitted signal to user (i, k) does not
interfere with all the users in CSI feedback pattern j from BS-
known channels H
j,[i]1
and H
j,[i]2
. Since BS-unknown channel
H
j,[i]3
is not O in reality, the transmitted signal to user (i, k)
interferes with all the users in CSI feedback pattern j from BS
[
i
]
3
. However, the interference power is expected to be low
since the path loss between the users in CSI feedback pattern j
to BS [
i
]
3
should be large (this is indeed the reason for no CSI
feedback for that link).
F
i,k
represents the degrees of freedom of the channel of
user (i, k) for transmitter diversity after BD precoding, and
min(M, F
i,k
) represents the available number of spatial streams.
Therefore, F
i,k
should be larger than zero at least. This is not
necessarily satisfied depending on the user distribution among
the CSI feedback patterns, even when (1) is fulfilled.
When F
i,k
is less than one or unfavorably small, the layered
BD increases the number of BSs used for the signal
transmission to user (i, k). Since the instantaneous CSI between
user (i, k) and the additional BSs is not known at the BSs, the
use of these BSs does not directly contribute to the
transmission quality of user (i, k). However, the increased
1072
number of BSs used for signal transmission increases the
spatial dimension of the channel which helps to null out the
interference from user (i, k) to the other users. Assuming that
the additional set of BSs for signal transmission for user (i, k) is

i,k
, |
i

i,k
| = 0, the U(
i

i,k
)M |
i

i,k
|N-dimensional
overall channel matrix from BS [
i

i,k
]
1
, ..., [
i

i,k
]
|ii,k|
to
all users belonging to CSI feedback pattern j, where
|(
i

i,k
)
j
| 0, is denoted as H
ii,k
. Similar to the above
mentioned procedure, the muting operation and subtraction of
the channel component for user (i, k) are performed on H
ii,k
,
and generated A
ii,k,k
is factored based on SVD as
, , , , ,
, , , (1), , (0), ,
[ ][ ]
i i k i i k i i k i i k i i k
H
k k k k k
= A U O V V
* * * * *
. (6)
Now, V
(0),ii,k,k
has a dimension of |
i

i,k
|N F
ii,k,k
=
|
i

i,k
|N(U(
i

i,k
)1)M. If F
ii,k,k
1, V
(0),ii,k,k
can be
used as the precoding matrix of user (i, k) for the layered BD.
Thus, M
i,k,l
is determined as
, 1 , 2 , | | ,
,
, ,[ ] , ,[ ] , ,[ ] (0), ,
, , ,
[ ]
,
i i k i i k i i k i i k
i i k
H H H H
i k i k i k k
H
i k l i i k
l
=
= e
M M M V
M O
*
* * * *
"
*



.
(7)
Compared to the simple muting method in [13], in which all L
BSs are always used for all users regardless of the CSI
feedback states, the proposed layered BD tries to avoid using
as much as possible the BS for the users who do not know the
instantaneous CSI to that BS. Since the transmitted signal
power from the CSI-unknown BS does not contribute to an
increase in the received signal power of the destination user,
the layered BD method enhances the achievable throughput.
Assuming that the channel matrix between BS l and user (i,
k) is H
i,k,l
, the equivalent channel matrix including the
precoding matrix for BD for user (i, k), B
i,k
, is represented as
, , , , ,
1
L
i k i k l i k l
l =
=
_
B H M
, (8)
where the BSs calculate B
i,k
assuming H
i,k,l
= O for l
i
. The
eigenmode MIMO transmissions [14] are applied to equivalent
channel matrixes B
i,k
. Assume that
i,k,s
and p
i,k,s
(s = 1, 2, ...,
M) are the s-th singular value of B
i,k
and the allocated power to
the s-th stream of user (i, k), respectively. The expectation of
the capacity of user (i, k), C
i,k
(b/s/Hz), is represented as
2
, , , ,
, 2
1
, , 0
0,
| |
log 1
i
M
i k s i k s
i k L
s
i k l l
l l
p
C
G P N

=
= e
| |
|
= +
|
+
\ .
_
_

, (9)
where G
i,k,l
and P
l
are the reported average path loss between
BS l and user (i, k) and the total transmission power at BS l,
respectively. N
0
is the receiver noise power. In the following
evaluation, we assume that the waterfilling-based power
allocation at the BS to each stream is performed using (9).
III. SIMULATION EVALUATION
A. Simulation Assumptions
We evaluate the user throughput performance of the
proposed method using two simulation scenarios. The first
model is the two-cell scenario in Fig. 1 for comparing the
proposed method to the various conventional approaches. N
and M are set to four and two, respectively. Four full CSI users
(thus, two per cell) that feedback instantaneous CSI to two BSs
are located at the cell edge where the distances to BSs 1 and 2
are the same. Two limited CSI users per cell that feedback
instantaneous CSI only to the nearest BS are located at 1/2
distance from the cell-edge normalized by the cell radius.
Distance dependent path loss with the decay factor of 3.76 is
assumed. As an instantaneous fading model, we assume block
Rayleigh fading, which is independent among all transmitter
antennas and among all receiver antennas. The signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) at the cell edge is set to 0 or 5 dB. By changing the
transmission power allocation ratio between the full CSI users
and the limited CSI users, the average throughput pair of R
e

and R
i
, which correspond to the total average user throughput
of the full CSI users per cell and that of the limited CSI users
per cell, respectively, is measured.
In order to compare the proposed method to conventional
approaches that can accommodate the considered partial CSI
feedback scenario, we evaluate the following transmission
strategies. Hereafter, the overall transmission bandwidth is
denoted as B.
(1) Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (FDM)
coordination: This transmission strategy is categorized into
interference coordination. Each BS uses non-overlapped
B/2 bandwidth. Each BS spatially multiplexes N/2M full
CSI users and N/2M limited CSI users using BD-based
single-BS MIMO. From which BS the signals to the
respective full CSI users are transmitted is determined
based on the instantaneous CSI to two BSs. Full
orthogonality is achieved among all the users.
(2) Cell breathing [15] (non-orthogonal coordination): This is
another kind of interference coordination. The overall
transmission bandwidth is divided into two frequency
blocks each of which has B/2 bandwidth. At each
frequency block, if BS 1 transmits a signal to the full CSI
users, BS 2 transmits a signal to the limited CSI users, and
vice versa. N/M full CSI users or limited CSI users per cell
are spatially multiplexed using BD-based single-BS
MIMO in each frequency block. The full CSI users and
limited CSI users interfere with each other; however, a
wider transmission bandwidth than the orthogonal FDM
coordination is achieved.
(3) MCP for full CSI users + orthogonal FDM coordination:
MCP using BD-based cooperative-BS MIMO is
performed for N/M full CSI users per cell. Meanwhile,
N/M limited CSI users per cell are multiplexed using BD-
based single-BS MIMO. To achieve full orthogonality,
bandwidth B is divided into three equally-spanned
frequency blocks and each block is used for the above
three transmissions exclusively.
(4) MCP for full CSI users + 1-cell frequency reuse: In this
method, although the same MIMO transmission is user for
the full CSI users and limited CSI users as in the MCP for
full CSI users + orthogonal FDM coordination, 1-cell
frequency reuse is assumed between the transmission for
limited CSI users at 2 cells. Therefore, the limited CSI
1073
users that belong to different BSs interfere with each other.
However, the interference is mitigated to some extent due
to the large path loss between limited CSI users and the BS
in other cells. The transmission bandwidth for full CSI
users and limited CSI users is B/2.
(5) MCP for all users using layered BD (proposed): In this
case, two BSs fully cooperate and the proposed partially
non-orthogonal layered BD is used to multiplex the
transmission signals to N/2M full CSI users and N/2M
limited CSI users per cell.
Fig. 2 illustrates the spectrum usage of the respective
transmission strategies. In addition to the above transmission
strategies, the BS-cooperation multiuser BD-MIMO method
assuming perfect CSI for all users and 1-cell frequency reuse
without BS cooperation are also evaluated as references.
Depending on the transmission strategy, round robin and
throughput maximization-based user scheduling are applied to
limited CSI users and full CSI users, respectively, if necessary.
BS 1
f
Full CSI user
Limited CSI user
BS 2
f
(1) Orthogonal FDM coordination
BS 1
f
BS 2
f
(2) Cell breathing
BS 1
f
BS 2
f
(3) MCP for Full CSI users +
orthogonal FDM coordination
BS 1
f
BS 2
f
(4) MCP for Full CSI users +
1-cell frequency reuse
MCP
MCP
BS 1
f
BS 2
f
(5) MCP for all users using
layered BD
MCP

Figure 2. Spectrum usage of respective transmission strategies.
Table I summarizes transmission bandwidth W, the number
of spatial streams Y, and inter-user interference I of the full CSI
users and limited CSI users, for the respective transmission
strategies. There is a tradeoff between the degrees of freedom
(W Y) and the inter-user interference. Among the three non-
orthogonal approaches, although the degrees of freedom are
identical for the three approaches, the proposed layered BD
method achieves the largest W, which is beneficial in
increasing the achievable throughput.
TABLE I. QUALITATIVE COMPARISON
Method
Full CSI users per cell Limited CSI users per cell
W Y I W Y I
Orthogonal FDM coordination B/2 N/2 0 B/2 N/2 0
Cell breathing B/2 N 0 B/2 N 0
MCP for Full CSI users +
orthogonal FDM coordination
B/3 N 0 B/3 N 0
MCP for Full CSI users +
1-cell frequency reuse
B/2 N 0 B/2 N 0
MCP for all users
using layered BD
B N/2 0 B N/2 0

The second evaluation model is a 7-cell model shown in
Fig. 3 for the purpose of comparing the proposed method to the
simple muting method [13]. All seven BSs cooperate. N and M
are set to two. One user per cell is randomly located with a
uniform distribution. The same propagation model is assumed
as in the two-cell model. The SNR at the cell-edge is set to 5
dB. As a partial CSI feedback model, we assume that user k
feeds back the instantaneous CSI for the BSs to which the
average path loss is less than G
k,min
A
CSI
(dB), where G
k,min
is
the average path loss between user k and the nearest BS, and
fixed offset value A
CSI
is parameterized in the following
evaluation. In the proposed layered BD method, the criteria for
determining the set of BSs used for the signal transmission to
user (i, k),
i

i,k
, is important to achieve good throughput
performance. In the paper, for simplicity, we select set
i

i,k

so that the sum of the logarithm of singular values
i,k,s
of B
i,k
,
E
s
{log
i,k,s
}, is maximized, although this criteria is not optimal.
The transmission power allocation to all users is assumed to be
uniform.

Figure 3. 7-cell model.
B. Simulation Results
Figs. 4(a) and 4(b) show R
i
as a function of R
e
for various
transmission strategies in the 2-cell scenario for the SNR of 0
and 5 dB, respectively. The relationship between R
i
and R
e
is
varied by changing the transmission power allocation ratio
between the limited CSI users and full CSI users. From the
comparison of the conventional 1-cell frequency reuse and
orthogonal FDM coordination, we see that although the
orthogonal approach can increase R
e
, which is sensitive to
inter-user interference, especially for high SNRs, R
i
tends to
degrade severely due to the reduced degrees of freedom of the
channel. The MCP for full CSI users + orthogonal FDM
coordination improves R
i
compared to orthogonal FDM
coordination thanks to the increased degrees of freedom due to
the use of MCP for the full CSI users. However, there is still a
performance gap relative to the non-orthogonal approaches.
The cell breathing method improves the tradeoff between R
i

and R
e
compared to the conventional 1-cell frequency reuse by
using only transmission power control without MCP. However,
the performance of the cell breathing method is not particularly
noteworthy when we need to allocate nearly the same
transmission power to all users.
1074
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
R
i

(
b
/
s
/
H
z
/
c
e
l
l
)
R
e
(b/s/Hz/cell)
1-cell frequency reuse
Orthogonal FDM coordination
Cell breathing
MCP for Full CSI users + orthogonal FDM coordination
MCP for Full CSI users + 1-cell frequency reuse
MCP for all users using layered BD (proposed)
MCP-BD assuming perfect CSI for all users
SNR = 0 dB

(a) SNR = 0 dB
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
R
i

(
b
/
s
/
H
z
/
c
e
l
l
)
R
e
(b/s/Hz/cell)
SNR = 5 dB
1-cell frequency reuse
Orthogonal FDM coordination
Cell breathing
MCP for Full CSI users + orthogonal FDM coordination
MCP for Full CSI users + 1-cell frequency reuse
MCP for all users using layered BD (proposed)
MCP-BD assuming perfect CSI for all users

(b) SNR = 5 dB
Figure 4. R
i
as a function of R
e
for various transmission strategies.
The other two non-orthogonal approaches, MCP for full
CSI users + 1-cell frequency reuse and the proposed layered
BD, achieve a better tradeoff between R
i
and R
e
than the other
approaches due to the balanced degrees of freedom and inter-
user interference. When comparing these two non-orthogonal
approaches, although they achieve approximately the same
performance when we allocate most of the transmission power
to the limited CSI users (= cell-interior users), the proposed
layered BD achieves a much larger R
e
for the given R
i
than the
MCP for full CSI users + 1-cell frequency reuse when we
allocate a large fraction of the transmission power to the full
CSI users (= cell-edge users). This is because the proposed
layered BD achieves the largest transmission bandwidth, W.
This indicates that when the main purpose for introducing BC-
cooperated MIMO is enhancement of the cell-edge user
experience, the proposed layered BD is especially promising
since it achieves almost the same performance as in the BD
with perfect CSI knowledge.
Figs. 5(a), 5(b), and 5(c) show the average user throughput,
average worst user throughput, and average number of
instantaneous CSI feedback links per user, respectively, as a
function of A
CSI
in the 7-cell model. The worst user throughput
is defined as the least user throughput among 7 users in each
channel realization. The proposed layered BD and simple
muted channel matrix-based BD [13] are compared. In addition,
the cooperative-BS multiuser BD MIMO method assuming
perfect CSI for all users and 1-cell frequency reuse without BS
cooperation are evaluated as references (the performance levels
are not a function of A
CSI
). The MCP-BD assuming perfect CSI
for all users achieves a higher average user throughput than the
1-cell frequency reuse without BS cooperation due to the effect
of cooperative-BS MIMO. When A
CSI
is large, the average user
throughput performance of the simple muting method is
comparable to that of the MCP-BD assuming perfect CSI for
all users, since the amount of the instantaneous CSI feedback is
sufficiently large. However, when A
CSI
is less than 15 dB, in
which each user feeds back CSI to nearest and second nearest
BSs only on average, the average user throughput of the simple
muting method is deteriorated compared to that for the 1-cell
frequency reuse without BS cooperation. This is because the
simple muting method always uses all seven BSs for signal
transmission to all users regardless of the CSI feedback states,
and transmission from the CSI-unknown BS does not
contribute to an increase in the received signal power of the
destination user. Meanwhile, the proposed layered BD method
tries to avoid using as much as possible the BS for the users
who do not know the instantaneous CSI to that BS. As a result,
the average user throughput of the proposed layered BD is
always equal to or larger than that of the 1-cell frequency reuse
without BS cooperation.
From Fig. 5(b), we see that the effect of MCP is more
significant from the viewpoint of the worst user throughput.
The proposed layered BD achieves a 35% increase in the
average worst user throughput compared to the 1-cell
frequency reuse even when A
CSI
is 10 dB. The superiority of
the layered BD method over the simple muting method is also
observed in the worst user throughput performance.
Considering that an excessively large A
CSI
such as 20 dB is
impractical both from the viewpoints of CSI measurement error
and the CSI feedback overhead, the proposed layered BD is
very effective in enhancing the cell-edge user experience with
partial CSI knowledge. We expect that the restriction in the
BS-coordinated user scheduling in the layered BD method can
be alleviated compared to the full orthogonal transmission
approaches when the variation in the sets of CSI feedback BSs
among multiple users is highly dispersed depending on the
distribution of the user locations.
1075
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
7.5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

u
s
e
r

t
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
b
/
s
/
H
z
/
u
s
e
r
)
A
CSI
(dB)
7-cell model
SNR = 5 dB
1-cell frequency reuse
MCP for all users using muting BD [13]
MCP for all users using layered BD (proposed)
MCP-BD assuming perfect CSI for all users

(a) Average user throughput
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

w
o
r
s
t

u
s
e
r

t
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
b
/
s
/
H
z
/
u
s
e
r
)
A
CSI
(dB)
7-cell model
SNR = 5 dB
1-cell frequency reuse
MCP for all users using muting BD [13]
MCP for all users using layered BD (proposed)
MCP-BD assuming perfect CSI for all users

(b) Average worst user throughput
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

n
u
m
b
e
r

o
f

C
S
I

f
e
e
d
b
a
c
k

l
i
n
k
s

p
e
r

u
s
e
r
A
CSI
(dB)
7-cell model
SNR = 5 dB

(c) Average number of instantaneous CSI feedback links per user
Figure 5. Throughput performance in 7-cell model.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper proposed a layered BD precoding method in
downlink multiuser MIMO transmission employing multiple
cooperative BSs where some of the instantaneous CSI feedback
between the user equipment and respective BSs are missing
depending on the location of the user equipment. In the layered
BD, the inter-user interference from the channel for which the
set of BSs knows the instantaneous CSI is eliminated as in the
conventional BD with perfect CSI feedback. However, since
some of the instantaneous CSI is not obtained at the BSs, the
inter-user interference from these channels without the
knowledge of the instantaneous CSI is allowed. To minimize
the inter-user interference from the BS-unknown channel and
to utilize fully the available transmission power, the layered
BD adaptively controls the set of BSs used for the signal
transmission for a particular user in user-by-user manner, based
on the CSI feedback state of that user and the other users. The
simulation results show that the proposed layered BD expands
the user throughput region compared to that of the
conventional approaches. When the main purpose of
introducing BC-cooperated MIMO is enhancement of the cell-
edge user experience, the proposed layered BD with partial CSI
knowledge is especially promising since it achieves almost the
same performance as in the case with perfect CSI knowledge.
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