Zero-forcing Incremental Beamforming
Transmission for Multiuser MIMO Systems
Jun Zhu and Hong-Chuan Yang
Dept. of Elec.& Comp. Engr.
University of Victoria
Victoria, BC, V8W 3P6, Canada
Email: zhujun, hyang@ece.uvic.ca
Abstract—In this paper, we present a new multiuser beamform-
ing transmission scheme for multiuser multiple-input multiple-
output (MIMO) systems. The new scheme is built upon the
conventional single-user random beamforming system and to
design the additional beamforming vectors in order to minimize
the interuser interference. We analytically quantify the sum-
rate performance of the resulting incremental beamforming
scheme. We showed through selected numerical examples that the
proposed scheme can offer considerable sum-rate performance
gain with limited additional system complexity.
Index Terms—MIMO broadcast channel, random beamform-
ing, sum-rate analysis, and wireless communications
I. INTRODUCTION
Multiple-antenna (MIMO) techniques can considerably im-
prove the spectral efficiency of wireless communications sys-
tems. However, equipping multiple antennas at the mobile
terminals might be challenging due to their size/cost con-
straints. In this circumstance, beamforming transmission has
been widely employed to explore the multiple antennas at
the base station (BS). Conventional random beamforming
scheme serve one selected user at a time slot[1]. Such scheme
facilitates low-complexity user selection strategy, as each
user can determine its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) without
estimating the complete channel vector. On the other hand, the
conventional beamforming scheme suffers from the absence of
spatial multiplexing gain, since only one user is scheduled in
each time slot. Meanwhile, the potential spatial multiplexing
gain provided by the multiple antennas of the BS can be
exploited through the simultaneous transmission to multiple
selected users. There is a significant amount of reseach work
on the resulting MIMO broadcast channels [2]-[6], [12].
Random unitary beamforming (RUB) is one of the most
popular low-complexity transmission scheme for multiuser
MIMO broadcast channels[7]-[11]. With RUB, the BS gen-
erates several random orthogonal beams to communicate with
multiple selected users simultaneously. In order to obtain
multiuser diversity gain, each user will feed back some quality
information on each beam, usually in terms of signal-to-
interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), based on which the BS
carries out proper user selection. It was shown in [9] that
RUB can achieve the same sum-rate scaling law as that of the
optimal dirty paper coding (DPC)-based scheme [2], [3] when
the number of users approaches infinity. Note that, however,
978-1-4244-5377-1/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE
since RUB controls interuser interference only through the user
selection process, the performance of RUB suffers from severe
interuser interference, especially when the number of users
is small. Moreover, the complete channel vector should be
estimated at each user to determine their SINRs on different
beam direction.
In this paper, we propose an incremental beamforming
transmission scheme for multiuser MIMO systems. The ob-
jective is to enhance the sum-rate performance of conven-
tional single-user beamforming transmission with secondary
beamforming to explore a certain spatial multiplexing gain.
Specifically, the system will operate exactly the same as the
single-user random beamforming system, except that after the
user is selected, the system will design a secondary beam
based on the channel vector of the selected user and use this
beam to serve other users. The secondary beam is designed
such that the first user’s transmission suffers from no or a
minimum amount of interference and as such, the overall
system performance is improved. The resulting system will
still enjoy low complexity as only the first selected user needs
to estimate its complete channel vector.
We adopt a zero-forcing approach for the second beam
design. Specifically, with the knowledge of the first selected
user’s channel vector, the BS can select the secondary beam-
forming vector to be orthogonal to the first user’s channel
vector, which completely eliminates the interference to the
first selected user. We analyze the sum rate performance
of the resulting system through mathematical analysis. We
obtain the exact statistics of the received signal power and
the interference power for both users, which is applied to
the approximate sum-rate evaluation of the resulting multiuser
MIMO system. Selected numerical examples are presented and
discussed to illustrate the performance benefit of the proposed
scheme.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section
II, we describe the system and channel model used in this
paper. After introducing the proposed incremental beamform-
ing transmission scheme in section III, we derive its sum-rate
expression in section IV. The numerical results with related
discussions are given in section V. The paper concludes with
some remarks in section VI.
 II. S YSTEM AND C HANNEL M ODELS
We consider the downlink transmission of a single cell,
where the base station (BS) is equipped with two transmit
antennas and there are K≥2 single-antenna users. 1 We
assume that, with proper power control mechanism, the users
experiences flat homogeneous Rayleigh fading. The channel
gains from the ith transmit antenna to the kth user hik are in-
dependent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) complex Gaussian
random variables with zero mean and unit variance. As such,
the instantaneous MISO channel from the BS to the kth mobile
user can be characterized by a zero-mean complex Gaussian
T A. Mode of operations
channel vector, denoted by hk = [h1k , h2k ] . We assume that
the transmitted signal vector x satisfy a maximum average
transmitting power constraint, i.e. E{xH x}≤P , where E{· }
denotes the statistical expectation and (· )H the Hermitian
transpose.
With conventional single-user beamforming transmission,
the BS transmits a data symbol to a single selected user
over each symbol period using a random beamforming vector,
denoted by w. In particular, the received symbol at user k can
be written as:
yk = hTk ws + nk , k = 1, 2, ..., K, (1)
where s is the data symbol and nk is the additive noise,
modeled as independent Gaussian random variable with zero-
mean and unit variance. As such, the received SNR at the kth
user is given by
γk = |hTk w|2 P. (2)
To explore multiuser diversity gain, each user will feed back
their SNR values, based on which the BS will select the
user with the largest SNR. Note that users can estimate
their SNR using training symbols, without the knowledge of
beamforming vector w or the estimation of channel vector hk .
To fully exploit the spatial degree of freedom of the mul-
tiuser MIMO system, the BS may transmit to multiple selected
users simultaneously. With the proper design of the beamform-
ing vectors and user selection, the interuser interference can be
controlled. The specific design and selection scheme proposed
in this work will be discussed in the following section. For the
two-transmit-antenna case under consideration, the received
signal at the kth user can be written as:
yk = hTk w1 s1 + hTk w2 s2 + nk , (3)
where si are data symbols to selected users and wi are
the corresponding beamforming vectors. With uniform power
allocation among uses, the SINR experienced by the kth user
for the reception of s1 is given by
|hTk w1 |2
γk = T
. (4)
|hk w2 |2 + 2/P
1 We consider the two transmit antenna case for the sake of clarity and
mathematical tractability. The generalization of the proposed scheme to more
antenna case is straight-forword, but with diminishing gain as intuitively
expected.
III. Z ERO - FORCING I NCREMENTAL B EAMFORMING
T RANSMISSION
We now present the proposed incremental beamforming
transmission strategy, which overcomes the limitation of con-
ventional random beamforming scheme in exploring spatial
multiplexing gain, but still enjoys very low system complex-
ity, even compared to the simplest multiuser beamforming
strategies in the literature, such as RUB. The operation of
the proposed scheme can be divided into the following three
steps.
Step 1: first user selection with random beamforming The
BS randomly generates a beamforming vector w1 and use it to
broadcast training symbol. Each user estimates and reports its
experienced SNR to the BS. The BS will then select the user
with the largest SNR, which is proportional to |hTk w1 |2 , as
the first selected user. As such, the index of the first selected
user is given by 1∗ = arg maxk (|hTk w1 |2 ). Note that this step
is essentially identical to conventional random beamforming
scheme.
Step 2: beamforming vector design for the second user
The first selected user will then estimate its complete channel
vector h1∗ and use it to determine the second beamforming
vector w2 . Noting that the second user transmission will cause
interference to first user, the second beamforming vector is
designed in order to minimize the amount of interference
from the second user. With the zero forcing approach, we can
generate w2 such that |ht1∗ w2 |2 = 0, which leads to zero
interference to the first user.
Step 3: second user selection based on SINR While continu-
ing the transmission to the first selected user, the BS broadcasts
training symbol using the second beamforming vector w2 . The
remaining users will estimate their experienced SINR on the
second beamforming direction while treating the first user’s
signal as interference. Mathematically, the SINR at the kth
user is equal to |hTk w2 |2 /(|hTk w1 |2 + 2/P ). The users will
feed back their SINR values over control channel and the BS
selects the user with the largest SINR as the second user for
beamforming transmission.
B. Discussion
The proposed incremental beamforming scheme is back-
ward compatible with the conventional random beamforming
scheme. The transmission to the first selected user can start
immediately after Step 1. The selection of the second beam-
forming vector and the second user may happen concurrently
with the first user transmission over the control channels. As
such, the proposed scheme will be an optional but desirable
feature of conventional random beamforming systems.
Compared with random unitary beamforming system, the
proposed scheme has much lower complexity. Note that only
the first selected user needs to estimate its complete channel
vector. The SNR and SINR for user selection can be easily
estimated through training symbols. While with the proposed
scheme, each user needs to feed back two real numbers in
sequential, the SINR feed back may occur during the trans- We can then calculate the PDF and CDF of γk as
mission to the first user, leading to higher system efficiency.  ∞
1 2 2
In the following section, we analyze the sum-rate performance fγk (x) = ( + y)e−( P +y)x
K −1 0 P
of the proposed scheme through mathematical analysis. K 
 K!
IV. S UM -R ATE A NALYSIS (1 − e−y )K−l (e−y )l dy
(K − l)!(l − 1)!
l=2
In this section, we analyze the ergodic sum rate of the above
K
1 
2
mentioned incremental beamforming in multi-user MIMO K!e− P x
=
systems. We first derive the statistical characterization of the K −1 (K − l)!(l − 1)!
l=2
selected users’ SINR, based on which the system sum rate can K−l  
be analytically evaluated.  i N 1
K−i−l
(−1) ( + )
i=0
K − l x + K − i (x + K − i)2
A. SINR analysis for first user
Based on the mode of operation of the proposed scheme, the and
 x
SINR of the first selected user, denoted as γ1 , can be shown
F (x) =
γk fγk (x)dx
to be given by 0
K
 K−l
  
|hT1∗ w1 |2 P 1 K! i
γ1 = T
= max(|hTk w1 |2 ), (5) = (−1)K−i−l
2
|h1∗ w2 | + 2/P 2 k K −1 (K − l)!(l − 1)! i=0 K −l
l=2
where we applied the result |hT1∗ w2 |2 = 0 due to the zero- e − P2 x
1
forcing design. Since w1 is a unitary vector and hk are ( − ). (12)
−x − K + i −K + i
independent Gaussian vectors, |hTk w1 |2 are i.i.d. χ2 random
Finally, after substituting Eq.s (10) and (11) into Eq. (8),
variables with two degrees of freedom, with the probability
we obtain the PDF of the second user’s SINR. In Fig. 1,
density function (PDF) given by
we plot the PDF of the second user’s SINR given in Eq.
f (x) = e−x . (6) (8), which matches with the simulation result very well, even
though we ignored the correlation between the numerator and
As such, the PDF of γ1 can be obtained, by slightly modifying denominator terms. As such, we can safely use this analytical
the PDF of the largest one of K χ2 random variables, as result for performance evaluation.
2 2 2
fγ1 (x) = K(1 − e− P x )K−1 e− P x (7) C. Ergodic Capacity
P
B. SINR analysis for second user The ergodic sum-rate capacity of multiuser MIMO system
with the proposed scheme can then be evaluated as
The second selected user is the user among the remaining  ∞
K −1 ones that achieves the largest SINR on the second beam. R= log2 (1 + γ)(fγ1 (γ) + fγ2 (γ))dγ, (13)
As such, the second user’s SINR, denoted as γ2 , is given by 0

|hTk w2 |2 where fγ1 (γ) and fγ2 (γ) are separately given in (7) and (10).
γ2 = max , (8)
k∈1,2,...K,k=1∗ |hTk w1 |2 + 2/P V. N UMERICAL E XAMPLES
which is the largest of K − 1 independent random variable In this section, we present several selected numerical exam-
|hT w2 |2 m ples to illustrate the mathematical formulism in the previous
γk = T k 2 = (9) sections and examine the performance of the proposed scheme.
|hk w1 | + 2/P n + 2/P
In Fig. 2, we compare the sum-rate performance of the
as the channel vectors for different users are independent. As proposed zero-forcing incremental beamforming (denoted by
such, the PDF of γ2 can be written in terms of the PDF and ZFIB in the figure) scheme in this paper with the conventional
CDF of γk as single-user beamforming and multiuser orthogonal beamform-
fγ2 (x) = (K − 1)(Fγk (x))K−2 fγk (x). (10) ing in different SNR range. We can see that when channel SNR
is low (5dB in the figure) and the interference factor is not
To determine the statistics of γk , we first note that its numera- dominant, our scheme performs similar with the RUB. On the
tor m is also a χ2 random variable with two degree of freedom. other hand, when the channel condition is good (channel SNR
On the other hand, the denominator n is no longer a standard = 20dB) and the total system sum rate would be limited by
χ2 random variable as the first user is already selected. Instead, the multiuser interference rather than by noise, our proposed
n should be one of the 2nd to the Kth largest χ2 r.v.s with scheme considerably outperformance RUB, especially when
two degrees of freedom, with PDF given by the number of user is limited.
K In order to reduce the feedback load, we can introduce a
1  K! −x K−l −x l channel-vector codebook for practical implementation. To be
fn (x) = (1 − e ) (e ) ). (11)
K −1 (K − l)!(l − 1)! more specific, there is a proposed random codebook, which is
l=2
 Probability Density Function(PDF) of SINR of second user 0.07 14
simulation(1000000 samples) RUB
analysis CRB
0.06
12 ZFIB

0.05
10

Sum rate bps/Hz

0.04
8
0.03 SNR = 20 dB

6
0.02

4
0.01
SNR = 5 dB

0 2
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
x Number of users

Fig. 1. PDF of the second user SINR Fig. 2. Sum rate comparison (M=2 SNR=5, and 20)

13
known both at BS and user end. The aim of the codebook setup
is to quantize the channel vector [13]. Then, the first selected 12
user only has to feedback the index of the codebook to the
11
BS after its full channel estimation. In Fig. 3, we provide the
sum-rate performance of the proposed scheme with difference Sum rate bps/Hz
10
codebook size. We can see that when the codebook size
9
increases, the performance approaches the ideal feedback case
as expected by intuition. We also compare the analytical sum- 8
rate result and simulation for the proposed scheme. From the channel quan. 8vec
7 channel quan. 16vec
figure, we can see that the analytical curve is a little bit higher channel quan. 512vec
than the simulation result because we ignored the correlation 6 ZFIB sim
ZFIB ana
between the two random terms of second user SINRs.
5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
VI. C ONCLUSION Number of users

In this paper, we studied the ergodic capacity of MIMO

Fig. 3. Effect of quantized channel feedback (M=2 SNR=20 B=8, 16, and
broadcast channels with the so-called zero-forcing incremental 512 )
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