Beamforming and combining for multi‐user large MIMO communication system

Abstract

A beamforming and combining method for a multi-user large multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is proposed, in this study. A transmitter is equipped with a very large number of antennas to serve many users. At the transmitter, a group of antennas is allocated to each user. For a particular group of antennas, a specific beamforming vector is employed at the transmitter for transmission of a signal of a specific user. At the user end, a distinct combining vector is utilised for detecting the transmitted signal. In the proposed scheme, first, the interference due to unwanted signals of undesired users is nullified by using the concept of null space. Then the method of maximum ratio transmission is used to calculate the beamforming vector. The calculation of combining vector depends upon the maximum eigenvalue criterion. The analytical performance of the proposed method is discussed in terms of symbol error rate (SER). An expression of SER is derived by using the moment generating function approach. It is shown by simulations and analysis that the proposed scheme performs better if more antennas are equipped either at the transmitter or users.