CSI feedback reduction techniques for cellular downlink with coordinated multi-point transmission

MIMO downlink with base station coordination in a cellular network is considered. In centralized coordinated transmission from a cluster of base stations, the channel state information (CSI) of users needs to be sent to a central processor for precoding and resource allocation. Real time CSI feedback from the users to their home base station and from the base stations to the central processor is a serious challenge from a practical point of view. CSI feedback schemes based on user channel strength and distance of a user to its home base station are proposed that reduce feedback overhead while having not much affect on system throughput. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.