Downlink best-effort packet data with multiple antennas

Communication through multiple base station antennas with downlink time division multiplexing, rate control and scheduling is considered for high-speed packet data delivery. In contrast to transmit diversity transmission, a new strategy is proposed. The proposed scheme, named distributed-multi-antenna-scheduling (DMAS), is a generalized form of parallel transmission from each and every available co-located antenna with joint scheduling, that results to simultaneous transmission of more than one packets to more than one intended users. The resulting transmission scheme is analyzed in a CDMA framework for single and dual antenna terminals and is shown, for the case of two base station antennas in downlink transmission, to achieve substantial increase in average data throughput compared to known transmit diversity schemes, in the presence of moderate multi-user diversity. The scheme increases the system throughput through the simultaneous transmission of multiple packets. It thus multiplies the number of simultaneously served users, which is also a desirable feature in the current high-speed data wireless solutions.