Zero-Forcing Beamforming Codebook Design for MU-MIMO OFDM Systems

Zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming, an efficient technique for multiuser MIMO systems, requires perfect channel state information to be available at the base station. This is achieved by quantizing the channel and feeding back the information with a limited number of bits. A challenge of this method is the large downlink signaling overhead, which is due to the large size of the codebook that can be used at the base station for ZF beamforming. In this paper, we first analyze this problem and then present a technique designing codebooks with reduced size and minimal performance degradation. We also define the associated procedures required for the system implementation. Simulation results show that the size of the eNodeB codebook can be substantially reduced with only a small (5%) penalty in performance.