Non-reciprocal transceivers in OFDM/SDMA systems: impact and mitigation

Channel reciprocity is needed in SDMA or MIMO downlink pre-filtering when the channel knowledge is acquired in the uplink. We first show analytically that the non-reciprocity of the base station analog hardware, which is part of the channel, introduces a very high level of multi-user interference and quantify the effect of the non-reciprocity by means of simulations. We then propose a novel calibration technique at the base station that enables to compensate for the non-reciprocity and reduce the MUI to a negligible value while having a low implementation cost.