User Selection for Multiuser MIMO Downlink With Zero-Forcing Beamforming

In this paper, we propose a greedy user selection with swap (GUSS) algorithm based on zero-forcing beamforming for multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) downlink channels. Existing user selection algorithms such as zero forcing with selection (ZFS) have the flaws of “redundant users” and “local optimum,” which compromise the achieved sum rate. GUSS improves the performance by adding the “delete” and “swap” operations to the user selection procedure of ZFS to eliminate “redundant users” and escape from “local optimum,” respectively. In addition, an effective-channel-vector-based effective-channel-gain-updating scheme is proposed to reduce the complexity of GUSS. With the help of this updating scheme, GUSS has the same order of complexity as ZFS with only a linear increment. Simulation results indicate that over the range of transmit signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) considered, on average, the sum rate of GUSS reaches 99.3% of the upper bound that is achieved by exhaustive search, with only 1.51 to 2.29 times the complexity of ZFS.