The present invention relates to a device and method for transmitting channel information in a wireless communication system and, in particular, to a device and method for transmitting channel information obtained by quantizing the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) downlink channel in a Multi user Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system based on an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) scheme.
MIMO is an advanced antenna system using multiple transmission and reception antennas, and various researches have been done for improving the communication capacity of the MIMO-based communication systems.
The MIMO systems can be divided into two structures: open loop MIMO in which transmission is done with no specific channel information and closed loop MIMO in which transmission is done with reference to the channel information fed back from the receiver. The open loop MIMO is implemented with a complex space-time coding scheme to achieve the transmission rate close to the theoretical channel capacity and hence the decoding complexity increases system complexity increases exponentially with the increase of the number of antennas. Accordingly, in reality the closed loop MIMO, in which each transmission antenna has an independent modulation and coding scheme according to channel state, is preferable to achieve the theoretical capacity of the open loop MIMO.
The conventional feedback methods for transmitting the channel information from a receiver to a transmitter in closed loop MIMO are exemplarily described hereinafter.
The first approach is to use a code book. In this case, the receiver estimates the channel and sends an index of a codeword selected from the code book shared between the transmitter and receiver based on an appropriate metric to the transmitter. In the IEEE 802.16e standard, the receiver performs a Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) on a channel matrix H to obtain a precoding matrix V as shown in equation (1). For reference, SVD decomposes the channel matrix H into 2 unitary matrices U and V and a diagonal matrix S, where U is a unitary matrix of left eigenvectors of H, V is a unitary matrix of right eigenvectors of H, and S is a diagonal matrix of eiganvalues of H.
H=U S VH (1)
The receiver compares the precoding matrix V with respective codewords and feeds backs an index of the corresponding codeword to the transmitter. Here, the codeword index consists of 3 or 6 feedback bits per subcarrier.
This approach is advantageous with the small number of feedback bits, however, performing SVD on the channel matrix and repeated codeword comparison results in computational overload of the receiver.
The second approach is to use a sounding signal. This approach can be considered under the assumption of the reciprocity of downlink and uplink channels. The receiver sends a sounding signal to the transmitter through a sounding channel and the transmitter estimates the uplink channel based on the sounding signal and then obtains downlink channel information. This method is appropriated for the Time Division Duplex (TDD) system in which the uplink and downlink channels are reciprocal in the same frequency band but not for the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) system in which different frequency bands are used for the uplink and downlink channels.
Meanwhile, IEEE 802.16m system, as the next generation communication system, support FDD as well as TDD, whereby there is a need to develop an efficient channel information feedback method for supporting the FDD operational mode that is capable of reducing the computation complexity of the receiver without degradation of the system performance in the OFDMA-based multi user MIMO system.
Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a channel information transmission device and method that is capable of supporting FDD mode in a multi user MIMO system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a channel information transmission device and method that is capable of feeding back the quantized channel information to the transmitter.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a device and method that is capable of feeding back only the differential information indicating difference between the current channel information and the previous channel information, thereby reducing feedback data amount and improving system performance.
According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a device for transmitting channel information of complex channels established between a transmitter and a receiver in a wireless communication system, comprising: a channel estimator for estimating a channel by decomposing a channel matrix element on a complex channel into a real part and an imaginary part: a channel quantizer for outputting quantization values by quantizing the real part and the imaginary part based on predetermined boundary values, respectively; a channel information generator for generating channel information corresponding to the quantization values of the real part and the imaginary part; and a channel information transmitter for transmitting the channel information.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for transmitting channel information of a complex channel established between a transmitter and a receiver in a wireless communication system, comprising: estimating a channel by decomposing a channel matrix element of the complex channel into a real part and an imaginary part; quantizing the real part and imaginary part of the estimated channel based on predetermined boundary values; generating channel information corresponding to the quantization results of the real part and imaginary part; and transmitting channel information.
According to further another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a device for transmitting channel information in a wireless communication system supporting Multi user Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU MIMO) based on Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), comprising: a channel estimator for estimating a channel from an FDD downlink signal: a channel information generator for generating channel information by quantizing a element of a channel matrix; and a channel information transmitter for feeding back the channel information.
According to still further another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for transmitting channel information in a wireless communication system supporting Multi user Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU MIMO) based on Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), comprising: estimating a channel from an FDD downlink signal; generating channel information by quantizing an element of the channel; and feeding back the channel information.
The channel information transmission device and method feeds back the channel information generated by quantizing a real part and an imaginary part of a channel matrix element in a multi user MIMO system, thereby reducing computation amount of the receiver and being able to implement effective feedback scheme supporting FDD.
The channel information transmission device and method calculates optimized boundary values using Gaussian distribution and quantizes the channel matrix elements based on the boundary values, thereby reducing feedback data without compromising system performance.
The channel information transmission device and method feeds back only the differential information indicating difference between the current channel information and the previous channel information, thereby reducing feedback data amount and improving system performance.
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention are described with reference to the accompanying drawings in detail. Detailed descriptions of well-known functions and structures incorporated herein may be omitted to avoid obscuring the subject matter of the present invention.
As shown in
The channel estimator 110 estimates channels by decomposing each element of the channel matrix of complex channels between the transmitter and the receiver into a real part and an imaginary part. The channel estimation is carried out by sampling the real part and imaginary part of each channel periodically, and the estimated channel value is output to the quantizer 130.
The boundary value calculator 120 calculates the boundary values as reference for quantizing the channel values and outputs the boundary values to the channel quantizer 130. The boundary value calculator 120 calculates and/or stores N−1 boundary values for N quantization levels and outputs the boundary values to channel quantizer 130. How to calculate the boundary values is described with reference to
In an embodiment of the present invention, the boundary values for quantizing the elements of the channel matrix in the real and imaginary parts are calculated using a probability density function (pdf) and/or a cumulative distribution function (cdf) under the assumption of Gaussian distribution of the complex channel matrix.
In more detail, when the probability variable is denoted by x, the provability density function by ƒx(x), the boundary value by a, the quantization value by {circumflex over (x)}, the quantization distortion by D, and the quantization level by N, the quantization distortion can be expressed as equation (2).
In order to derive the condition of ai in which D minimizes, a partial differentiation is taken with respect to ai as indicated by equation (3), resulting in equation (4).
From equation 4, the boundary value ai minimizing quantization distortion D is the mean value of the quantization values ({circumflex over (x)}i, {circumflex over (x)}i+1).
Next, in order to obtain the quantization value minimizing D, a partial differentiation is taken with respective to {circumflex over (x)}i as indicated by equation (5), resulting in equation (6).
From equation (6), it is known that the quantization value {circumflex over (x)}i, is a function of the boundary value ai and also is a conditional mean of x over the range (ai−1, ai).
The ai and {circumflex over (x)}i are finally obtained by calculating ai and {circumflex over (x)}i iteratively until the significant digit does not change. In this manner, the boundary values and quantization values are determined according to the quantization bits (quantization level) as shown in table 1. In an exemplary embodiment the number of significant digits is 4 below decimal point.
The channel quantizer 130 quantizes the estimated channel values output by the channel estimator 110 with reference to the boundary values provided by the boundary value calculator 120. As aforementioned, the quantization is performed on each element of the channel matrix in the real and imaginary parts and the quantized results are output to the channel information generator 140.
The channel information generator 140 generates the channel information by encoding the quantized values output by the channel quantizer 130. Here, the channel information for each element of the channel matrix is generated with the respective real part and the imaginary part encoded into the number of bits corresponding to the quantization level.
For instance, when the quantization level (number of quantization bits) is 4, the channel information generated by the channel information generator 140 and the quantized channel values corresponding to the channel information can be listed as shown in table 2.
That is, although the channel information is provided as the quantized channel values, the channel information is preferably provided as the indices representing the quantized channel values in the form of a table or base mode codebook as shown in exemplary table 2.
The graph (a) of
The graph (b) of
Finally, the channel information transmitter 150 transmits the channel information to the transmitter through a feedback channel.
As shown in
The differential information generator 250 compares the current channel information output by the channel information generator 240 with the previous channel information and generates the differential information based on the difference between the current and previous channel information. For this purpose, the differential information generator 250 can be provided with a buffer for temporarily storing the previous channel information provided by the channel information generator 240 so as to generate the differential information by comparing the current channel information output by the channel information generator 240 and the previous channel information stored in the buffer.
In case of 8-bit channel information including respective 4 real part quantization bits and 4 imaginary part quantization bits, the initial 8-bit channel information has no previous channel information. Accordingly, the differential information generator 250 generates the initial 8-bit channel information as the differential information (in this case, the buffer is set to 0) and stores the initial 8-hit channel information into the buffer. Once the initial 8-bit channel information is stored in the buffer, the differential information generator 250 compares the current channel information with the previous channel information and generates the differential information of 1 or 2 bits (2 to 4 bits per channel).
Here, the differential channel information can be implemented for leveling up or down (e.g. the differential channel information bit can be set to ‘1’ for leveling up and ‘0’ for leveling down) or in the form of an index indicating the channel information listed in a differential mode codebook .
The channel information transmitter 260 transmits the differential information to the transmitter through a feedback channel. As aforementioned, the entire channel information, e.g. 8-bit channel information, is transmitted in an initial feedback stage, and then the 2 to 4-hit differential information is transmitted.
The channel information transmission method according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention is described hereinafter with reference to
Detailed descriptions of procedures and operations of the channel information transmission method that have been described already in association with the channel information transmission device may be omitted.
Referring to
Next, the receiver generates channel information composed of a predetermined number of bits by encoding the quantized real part value and imaginary value at step S730. Finally, the receiver transmits the channel information to the transmitter at step S740.
Referring to
Sequentially, the receiver compares the current channel information with the previous channel information to output differential information at step S840. In this embodiment, the initial channel information is regarded as the differential information. Finally, the receiver transmits the differential information to the transmitter at step S850. At the initial feedback stage the initial channel information is transmitted, and differential information is transmitted from the next feedback stage.
The receiver first sets quantization values corresponding to the number of quantization levels at step S910. When using 4 quantization levels as shown in
For reference, the channel information transmission device and method according to the present invention exemplify quantization scheme in which the real part and the imaginary part of each channel element are encoded with 4 bits respectively. As described above, the channel information transmission device and method according to the present invention can reduce the number of bits of channel information without compromising the system performance by quantizing the real part and the imaginary part of each channel element with 8 bits (4 hits for real part and 4 bits for imaginary part).
In case of 4×2 MIMO system as exemplarily shown in
Particularly in a Collaborative MIMO system which is implemented with a base station having multiple antenna and multiple mobile terminals each having a single antenna, since each mobile terminal uses a single antenna, the channel information transmission method according to the present invention can dramatically reduce the feedback information of the mobile terminal relatively to the case that a mobile terminal uses multiple antenna.
While the invention has been shown and described with reference to certain exemplary embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may he made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Therefore, the spirit and scope of the present invention must be defined not by described embodiments thereof but by the appended claims and equivalents of the appended claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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10-2008-0041609 | May 2008 | KR | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/KR09/02359 | 5/4/2009 | WO | 00 | 11/4/2010 |