Perspective: eliminating channel feedback in next generation cellular networks

Abstract

The ever-increasing demand for data has forced cellular networks towards advanced multi-antenna (MIMO) techniques. However, advanced MIMO solutions such as massive MIMO, coordinated multi-point, distributed MIMO, and multi-user MIMO, all require the base station to know the downlink channels to the client. In the absence of this information, the base station cannot beamform its signal to its users. Therefore, base stations require user devices to perform the measurements and send the channels back to the basestation as feedback. This feedback generates significant overhead that scales linearly with the number of antennas, and is a bottleneck for next generation of cellular networks with large antenna deployments.