Hermitian Precoding for Distributed MIMO Systems with Individual Channel State Information

We consider a distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system in which multiple transmitters cooperatively serve a common receiver. It is usually very costly to acquire full channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) in such a scenario, especially for large-scale antenna systems. In this paper, we assume individual CSIT (I-CSIT), i.e., each transmitter has perfect CSI of its own link but only slow fading factors of the others. A linear Hermitian precoding technique is proposed to enhance the system performance. The optimality of the proposed precoding technique is analyzed. Numerical results demonstrate that the performance loss incurred by the I-CSIT assumption is negligible as compared to the full-CSIT case.