Transmitter Optimization and Performance Gain for Multiple-Input Single-Output Systems with Finite-Rate Direction Feedback

Consider finite-rate channel-direction feedback in a system with multiple transmit but single receive antennas. We investigate how the transmitter should be optimized for symbol error rate with finite-rate feedback, and how the symbol error rate and outage probability improve as a function of the number of feedback bits. It is found that when the number of feedback directions is equal to or larger than the number of transmit antennas, transmit beamforming is optimal. Otherwise, the antennas should be divided into two groups, where antenna selection is used in the first group to choose the strongest channel, and equal power allocation is used in the second group. At high signal to noise ratio (SNR), the optimal power allocation between these two antenna groups is proportional to the number of antennas in each group. Based on high SNR analysis, we quantify the power gain of each feedback bit. It is shown that the incremental gain increases initially and diminishes when the number of feedback bits surpasses the logarithm (base 2) of the number of transmit antennas.