Efficient Allocation of Periodic Feedback Channels in Broadband Wireless Networks

Advanced wireless technologies such as multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) require each mobile station (MS) to send a lot of feedback to the base station. This periodic feedback consumes much of the uplink bandwidth. This expensive bandwidth is very often viewed as a major obstacle to the deployment of MIMO and other advanced closed-loop wireless technologies. This paper is the first to propose a framework for efficient allocation of periodic feedback channels to the nodes of a wireless network. Several relevant optimization problems are defined and efficient algorithms for solving them are presented. A scheme for deciding when the base station (BS) should invoke each algorithm is also proposed and shown through simulations to perform very well.