Int. J.

Communications, Network and System Sciences, 2011, 4, 82-87

doi:10.4236/ijcns.2011.42010 Published Online February 2011 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ijcns)

Performance of Block Diagonalization Scheme for

Downlink Multiuser MIMO System with Estimated
Channel State Information
Feng Wang, Marek E. Bialkowski
School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
E-mail: {fwang, meb}@itee.uq.edu.au
Received December 7, 2010; revised January 8, 2011; accepted January 10, 2011

Abstract
In this paper, we study the performance of block diagonalization (BD) scheme for a downlink multiuser
multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system with imperfect channel state information (CSI). At each mobile
user, information about the channel is obtained by applying the minimum mean-square-error (MMSE) channel estimation method. The channel state information is fed back to the base station through error-free uplink
channels. A theoretical analysis is performed showing that channel estimation errors contribute to co-channel
interferences thus deteriorating sum rate capacity. Computer simulations are performed to evaluate the impact of channel estimation errors on the sum rate capacity. The results show that if the MSE of the channel
estimation is not less than 10-2, the impact of channel estimation errors is significant and cannot be neglected.
To combat this adverse effect, a proper transmit power level is required for the training signals.
Keywords: MIMO, Block Diagonalization, Sum Rate

1. Introduction
In the last decade, wireless MIMO communication systems employing multiple antennas at transmitter and receiver have received a considerable attention. The main
reason is that MIMO technology is capable of improving
significantly the signal transmission quality in rich scattering environment without the need for extra operational
frequency bandwidth [1]. Recently, a significant shift of
research focus has been observed from peer-to-peer links
to multiuser MIMO systems [2]. A multiuser MIMO
system typically consists of a base station equipped with
multiple antennas and a number mobile users, each possibly equipped with multiple receive antennas. The base
station transmits data to these mobiles users. To eliminate or reduce interference, the base station is required to
employ orthogonalization techniques. These orthogonalization techniques distribute signals to mobile users
among different dimensions of resources and thus obtain
a minimum interference between them. One of the popular orthogonalization techniques is the time division multiple access (TDMA) technique. With TDMA, the base
station transmits to a mobile user on a particular time slot.
Alternatively, the base station can transmit to multiple
Copyright 2011 SciRes.

users simultaneously by employing other orthogonalization techniques such as dirty-paper-coding (DPC) [3] or
multiple beamforming [4]. DPC pre-cancels interference
at the base station by using the perfect channel state information (CSI) and the full knowledge of the transmitted signals. Information theoretic works have proved that
DPC is capable of achieving sum capacity [5,6]. However, it is not suitable for implementation in practical
systems because of its complexity. Due to this reason,
researchers have investigated a number of sub-optimal
approaches. Among them, BD has been proved to have
the ability of achieving a large fraction of DPC capacity
with much reduced complexity [4] In this approach, the
base station transmits signals to multiple mobile users by
applying orthogonal beamforming weights. As a result,
each mobile users beamforming weights lie in the null
space of all other mobile users channels. This is equivalent to having orthogonal channels between different
mobile users.
BD scheme is an attractive orthorgonalization scheme
for its low complexity and acceptable sum capacity. Attention has been focused on improving the performance
of BD under realistic scenarios. In [7], an improved BD
algorithm that accounts for the presence of other cell
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interferences is proposed under the assumption that the

transmitter has full CSI and the information about the
interference plus noise covariance matrix for in-cell users.
Researchers have also considered an impact of an antenna array configuration and mutual coupling on the
sum capacity promised by BD. In [8], the impact of mutual coupling on BD performance in terms of sum rate
capacity is addressed. In, [9] comparisons between BD
schemes employing uniform circular array (UCA) and
uniform linear array (ULA) are given. To further improve the sum capacity, a fast antenna selection scheme
at base station is presented in [10]. However, most of the
existing research results are based on the assumption of
perfect channel state information at mobile users. In
practical situations, the mobile users obtain CSI by applying channel estimation schemes. In this paper, we
assume that the mobile users employ the training-based
MMSE channel estimation [11]. Based on this assumption, we evaluate the impact of channel estimation errors
on the performance of a multiuser MIMO system employing BD scheme in terms of sum rate capacity.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents
the system model. In Section 3, the BD scheme is introduced. Section 4 is devoted to the channel estimation by
mobile users. We introduce the channel estimation errors
into the BD scheme and present an analysis of the impact
of channel estimation errors on the system capacity in
Section 5. Section 6 presents numerical results accompanied by discussion. Section 7 concludes the paper.

between the base station and the kth mobile terminal is

denoted by k C M k Nt The elements of Hk are described by zero-mean circular symmetric complex Gaussian random variables, which are appropriate for a narrow-band system operating in a non-line-of-sight (NLOS)
rich scattering environment. The (p,q)th elements of Hk
represent the channel fading between the qth transmitting
antennas at base station and the pth receiving antenna at
the kth mobile user. The mobile terminals are spatially
separated As they do not share the same scattering environment, it is assumed that they experience independent
fading.
By assuming xk C N1 denotes the transmitted signal vector intended for the kth mobile user, and k
CMk1 represents the zero-mean additive white Gaussian
noise vector with variance n2 , the Mk 1 received signal vector at the kth mobile terminal is given as

2. System Model

3. Linear Beamforming Schemes

Figure 1 illustrates a multiuser MIMO system model.

We consider a downlink scenario, where the base station
broadcasts information to L mobile users. We assume
that K out of L mobile users are scheduled by higher layers scheme, and each selected mobile user receives multiple data streams. The base station employs Nt transmit
antennas and the kth mobile user is equipped with nk receiving antennas. The downlink complex channel matrix

The received signal at the kth MS, given as (1), is rewritten as

y k H k xi k , k 1, , K

It is assumed that there are Lk data streams intended

for the kth mobile terminal. Assuming that the beamforming process takes place at the base station, the
transmitted signals can be written as
x k w k s k , k 1, , K

Copyright 2011 SciRes.

(2)

Lk 1

represents the data streams for the kth

where s k C
mobile terminal and w k C N Lk denotes the beamforming matrix for the for the kth mobile terminal.

yk n H k w i si n k n
i 1

H k w k sk n H k

i 1,i k

w i si n k n

(3)

where the second term represents the co-channel interference (CCI) caused by the multiuser sharing the
downlink resources. The principal idea of the block diagonalization is to find the beamforming vectors which
can zero-force the CCI. To enable the users to receive
their own data with a zero co-channel interference, the
base station has to apply the transmit beamforming
weights such that
H i w k 0, 1 i k K

Figure 1. Multiuser MIMO system model.

(1)

i 1

(4)

With the beamforming vectors satisfying (4), the CCI is

completely eliminated and thus the kth MS observes a
point-to-point MIMO link with the base station.
By defining
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84

HT , , HT , HT , , H T T
H
k
k 1
k 1
K
1

(5)

the constraint of (4) can be rewritten as

w 0
H
k
k

All the elements of the optimal training matrix should

have the same magnitude. One of the most popular
training matrices is given as [12]

(6)

Equation (6) indicates that the beamforming vectors

for the kth mobile user should lie in the null space of (5).
By applying singular value decomposition (SVD), the
following is obtained

U
k
H
k
k
0

AL.

0 (1)
Vk
0

(0)
V
k

(7)

is the diagonal matrix with all non-negative

where
k
sing- ular values. V k 0 contains vectors corresponding to
the zero singulars. They form an orthogonal basis for the
space of (5). The columns are the candidate beamforming vectors.
By using the beamforming vectors generated by (7),
the CCI is completely eliminated and the mobile users
observe point-to-point MIMO links with the base station.
As a result, the effective MIMO link for the kth mobile
user is described by

0
H eff , k H k V
k

(8)

Therefore, the broadcasting sum rate capacity for a

downlink multiuser MIMO system employing block diagonalization scheme can be written as

1
CBD E log 2 det I 2 H eff , k H eff , k

k 1
n

(9)

N
M

1
WM N M

M 1
M

S k H k P k

(10)

(12)

The task of the mobile users at this stage is to recover

the channel matrix between the base station and the kth
mobile user based on the knowledge of the received signals Sk and the training matrix P. Different methods,
including least squares (LS), minimum mean-squareerror (MMSE) and their improved versions [11], can be
employed by the MIMO channel estimator at the kth
mobile user. We assume that the output of the channel
estimator at the kth mobile user is H est
k . The channel
estimation error can be expressed by an error matrix,
which is given as
est
H err
k Hk Hk

(13)

The performance of the channel estimator is characterized by the error matrix given by (13) and evaluated in
terms of mean-square-error (MSE). The MSE of the
channel estimator at the kth mobile user is expressed by

We assume that training-based MIMO channel estimation methods are employed by the multiuser MIMO system, where the base station is broadcasting pilot signals
to mobile users and all the mobile users perform channel
estimation independently. The mobile users send the
estimated channel state information to the base station
via uplink feedback channels. Based on these channel
state information, the base station performs beamforming,
interference cancellation and downlink data transmission.
In Figure 2, a basic downlink information frame structure is shown.
Assuming M N represent the number of the training
signal vectors, the training sequences can be given as

(11)

where WN e j 2 N and p pilot is the transmitted training power constraint. As a result, the received signals at
the kth mobile user can be expressed as

H est
MSEk tr E H est
k
k

4. Channel Estimation Errors

P p1 , p 2 , , p M

1
1
1 W
p pilot
M

N 1
1 WM

(14)

where tr() represents the trace operation over a matrix

and ()H is the conjugate transpose of a matrix. Smaller
values of MSE indicate a higher accuracy of the channel
estimation. For a given MIMO channel estimator, the
MSE of the channel estimator is decided by a few factors,
including transmitted power to noise ratio (TPNR) in the
training mode, and the number of antenna elements at the
transmitter and receiver.

5. Sum-Rate Capacity with Channel

Estimation Errors
We assume that the uplink CSI feedback channels are
error-free. Consequently, the base station has an access
to the same channel estimation results as the active mobile

Figure 2. Frame structure of downlink information.

Copyright 2011 SciRes.

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F. WANG ET

users. Based on these CSI, the base station performs

beamforming, power allocation and data transmission.
By using the estimated CSI, the Formula (3) can be rewritten as
i 1

i si n
k sk n H k w
Hk w
i 1,i k

H err
k w i si n k n
i 1

Channel error interference

We can see that in (15), the kth mobile user is receiving the signals inclusive the co-channel interference (CCI)
from other mobile users, white additive noise and the
interference caused by channel estimation errors. With
the channel estimation errors taken into account, the
overall estimated channel matrices are given as
H

H , H , , H

H1err

T
K

,H
T

err T
2

, , H err
K

, H err
k 1

,H
T

err T
k 1

, H err
K

(17)

To cancel the co-channel interference, the weights for

the kth mobile user should be lying in the null space of
(17). By performing SVD over the co-channel mobile
users overall channel, we have
est

est U
est k 0 V
est 1 V
est 0
H
k
k
k
k

0 0

k 0 V
1 V
0
U
k
k
k

0 0
err 0 err 1

err k

err 0
U
V
V
k
k
k

0
0

(18)

The first term in (18) is the SVD result of the error-free overall matrix and the second term represents the
SVD result of the channel estimation error matrix. As a
result of (18), the candidate beamforming vectors for the
est 0 . By setting the
kth mobile user are given as V
k
beamforming vectors as
est 0
k V
w
k

(19)

The effective MIMO link with the channel estimation

Copyright 2011 SciRes.

w
k 0
H
k

(21)

H N
1
Rk E log 2 det I H
eff , k k H eff , k

(22)

is the noise and coherent channel interference

where N
k
matrix for the kth mobile terminal. It can be represented
by
K

2 I H w
H H
N
k
n
k i wi Hk
i 1,i k

(23)

6. Numerical Results

est HT , HT , HT , HT T
H
k
k 1
k 1
K
1

(20)

(16)

Following (16), the co-channel mobile users they can

be expressed as

H1err

H
eff , k H k w k

Formula (21) shows that the channel estimation errors

contribute to co-channel interference. The channel capacity between the base station and the kth mobile user
can then be written as

Co channel interference

T
2

errors taken into account for the kth mobile user is described by

(15)

T
1

85

However, due to the existing channel estimation errors,

the constraint shown by (6) is obviously not held any
more, and has been changed to

yk n H est
k w i si n k n

est

AL.

In this section, we evaluate the performance of the linear

beamforming schemes for the downlink multiuser MIMO
system with the imperfect channel state information,
which is obtained by the channel estimators at the mobile
users. We assume that the mobile users employ the same
channel estimator and they perform channel estimation
independently. We assume that all the mobile users employ the MMSE channel estimator. We refer a multiuser
MIMO system as system, where K represents the number of mobile users, M is the number of
receive antennas at the mobile user and N refers to the
number of antennas at the base station. As Monte Carlo
approach is applied, each point in the presented results is
obtained from an average of 10000 independent simulation runs.
Figure 3 displays the channel estimation MSE of
MMSE estimator for the kth mobile user. Two situations
are included, in where the numbers of transmit antenna
are fixed to 8 and 4, while the number of receive antenna
at the kth mobile user is varied.
It can be seen in Figure 3 that when the number of
transmit antenna is fixed to 8 or 4 and the performance of
the MMSE channel estimator deteriorates with the number of the receiving antennas. At the same time, it can
also be noted that if number of receiving antennas at the
mobile users is fixed, a decreased number of transmit
antenna at the base station results in an increased performance of MMSE channel estimator. More specifically,
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F. WANG ET

at SNR = 20 dB, the MMSE channel estimator at a mobile

user with 2 receive antennas achieves MSE = 0.725 for the
situation where the number of transmit antennas is 8 and
MSE = 0.240 when the number of transmit antenna is 4.
In Figures 4 and 5, the impact of channel estimation
error on the performance of multiuser MIMO system in
terms of sum rate capacity is investigated. The sum rate
of the block diagonalization is illustrated as a function of
data SNR and channel estimation MSE. It can be seen
from these figures that the presence of channel estimation errors deteriorates the sum rate capacity. In the region of low SNR, the noise has a dominating impact on
the performance of the block diagonalization while the
co-channel interference introduced by channel estimation
errors has a limited impact. As a result, the sum rate capacity varies slightly with MSE. In the region of high
SNR, the co-channel interference introduced by channel
estimation errors takes the dominating role and has a
significant impact on the sum rate capacity.
When the MSE is greater or equal to 10-1, the existence of channel estimation errors significantly decreases

Figure 3. Channel estimation MSEs of the MMSE estimator

versus SNR.

AL.

60

Sum Rate(bps/Hz)

86

40

20
30

0
1

20

0
-1

10
-2

Log(MSE)

-3

SNR

Figure 5. Impact of channel estimation error on the sum

rate capacity of 4 (2 8) system.

the sum rate capacity. When the MSE is smaller or equal

to 10-2, the impact of channel estimation errors is small
and can be neglected. The simulation results also indicate
that a reasonable transmit power (or SNR) is required for
the training signals to make sure that the channel estimator at mobile users have a channel estimation MSE as
low as 10-2.
Figure 6 and Figure 7 present the cumulative distribution of the sum rate capacity for 2 (2 4) and 4 (2
8) systems, respectively.
These two figures further confirm the results shown
earlier in Figures 5 and 6. The presence of channel estimation errors has a negative impact on the sum rate capacity of a multiuser MIMO system. It can be observed
from the presented results that the gaps between the sum
rates for the same MSE with different SNR levels (15 dB
for red plots and 30 dB for blue plots) decrease with the
MSE. To combat the negative impact brought by channel
estimation errors, a higher transmit power is required for
data transmission. In Figure 6, it can be seen that the 2
(2 4) system achieves similar capacity when the channel

Sum Rate(bps/Hz)

40
30
20
10
30

0
1

25
20

0
15

-1

10
-2

Log(MSE)

5
-3

SNR

Figure 4. Impact of channel estimation error on the sum

rate capacity of 2 (2 4) system.
Copyright 2011 SciRes.

Figure 6. CDF of sum rate capacity for a 2 (2 4) system.

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87

European Transactions on Telecommunications, Vol. 10,

No. 6, November 1999, pp. 585-596. doi:10.1002/ett.44
60100604

Figure 7. CDF of sum rate capacity for a 4 (2 8) system.

estimation error MSE = 1 at SNR = 15 dB and MSE = 10

at SNR = 30 dB. These results indicate that to combat the
increased MSE from 1 to 10, an increased transmit data
SNR from 15 dB to 30 dB is required. In Figure 7, it can
be seen that the 4 (2 8) system achieves similar capacity for the situations when channel estimation MSE =
1 at SNR = 15 dB and channel estimation MSE = 10 at
SNR = 30 dB. These results show that to combat the increased MSE from 1 to 10, an increased transmit SNR
from 15 dB to 3 dB is required.

7. Conclusions
In this paper, we have investigated the impact of channel
estimation errors on the performance of block diagonalization scheme for a multiuser MIMO system. Theoretical
analysis has been presented showing that the presence of
channel estimation error contributes to co-channel interference of the mobiles users, thus rendering deteriorated
sum rate capacity of the system. Monte Carlo simulations
have been carried out to evaluate the impact of channel
estimation errors on the performance of multiuser system
in terms of sum rate capacity. The results have shown
that to combat the negative impact brought by channel
estimation errors, an extra power is required for data
transmission. The results also have shown that when the
MSE is not less than 10-2, the impact of channel estimation errors is reduced to a very low level. The simulation
results have also revealed that a reasonable transmit
power is required for the training signals to make sure
that the channel estimator at mobile users offers channel
estimation MSE as low as 10-2.

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