This paper considers a downlink cellular network where multi-antenna base stations (BSs) simultaneously serve their associated multi-antenna users. Each BS is distributed according to a homogeneous Poisson point process and uses zero-forcing beamforming for spatial division multiplexing with partial channel state information (CSI). During downlink transmission, each user combines the multiple antenna outputs and quantizes the CSI to feed back to its associated BS. Specifically, this paper focuses on antenna combining at the receiver. Conventional quantization-based combining (QBC) effectively reduces the quantization error; however, inter-cell interference in the cellular networks degrades the QBC gain. This degradation is analyzed using a spherical-cap approximation of vector quantization (SCVQ). From the SCVQ, the ergodic spectral efficiency and the optimal number of feedback bits are investigated, and it is shown that the QBC degrades the gain of the effective channel. To address this problem, an optimization solution is proposed that selects the antenna combining to maximize the spectral efficiency. The solution is also derived by considering the expected beamforming vectors of other cells. It is demonstrated by simulation that the proposed solution outperforms the conventional methods.
Antenna Combining for Interference Limited MIMO Cellular Networks