Zero-Forcing Beamforming in Multiuser MISO Downlink Systems Under Per-Antenna Power Constraint and Equal-Rate Metric

In this paper, we analyze the average sum rate of downlink multi-antenna systems with zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF). In practical implementations, each antenna is equipped with its own power amplifier and is limited individually by linearity of the amplifier. Thus, this paper adopts a more realistic per-antenna power constraint instead of conventional sum-power constraint on transmit antennas. To this end, we first show that a distribution of the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the ZFBF scheme with per-antenna power constraint and equal-rate metric can be approximated as a minimum of chi-square random variables. Based on this result, we present an accurate formula of the average sum rate in a closed form. Furthermore, employing extreme value theory, an expression of the asymptotic average sum rate with large numbers of transmit antennas and users is derived from the limiting distribution of the received SNR. Simulation results verify the validity of our analysis even with not so large numbers of transmit antennas and users.