Opportunistic Scheduling and Beamforming Schemes for MIMO-SDMA Downlink Systems with Linear Combining

Opportunistic scheduling and beamforming schemes are proposed for multiuser MIMO-SDMA downlink systems with linear combining in this work. Signals received from all antennas of each mobile terminal (MT) are linearly combined to improve the effective signal-to-noise-interference ratios (SINRs). By exploiting limited feedback on the effective SINRs, the base station (BS) schedules simultaneous data transmission on multiple beams to the MTs with the largest effective SINRs. Utilizing the extreme value theory, we derive the asymptotic system throughputs and scaling laws for the proposed scheduling and beamforming schemes with different linear combining techniques. Computer simulations confirm that the proposed schemes can substantially improve the system throughput.