1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless communication system with feedback and a method therefore. More particularly, the present invention relates to a wireless communication system which approximates multi-dimensional feedback information as lower-dimensional information to be fed back to a transmitter, and a method therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Unlike a wired channel, a wireless channel environment has low reliability due to multipath interference, shadowing, attenuation of radio waves, time-varying noise, and multi-user interference. In particular, due to a multipath fading effect related to movement of a reflector or a user, a desired signal is received with an interference signal and suffers from excessive distortion, thereby significantly degrading the performance of the overall system. To overcome multipath fading, which may be considered as one of the most complicated problems in achieving high-speed data communications through a wireless channel, significant research has been conducted over the past several years. The most effective method for alleviating multipath fading is a diversity technique which receives a plurality of signals that suffer from fading at fingers and combines the outputs of fingers. It is known in the art that this diversity technique exhibits excellent performance in a wireless channel environment. Thus, various methods for exploiting diversity have been proposed and are currently in common use. These methods include time diversity, frequency diversity, and space diversity (antenna) techniques.
In space diversity using multiple antennas, a system for improving downlink performance with multiple receiving antennas at a base station is currently commercialized. Also, uplink performance can be improved with multiple receiving antennas at a terminal. However, due to small power consumption, small size, light weight, and complexity constraints on a terminal, a diversity method for a terminal with a plurality of antennas has many technical limitations. To overcome the above problems, transmit diversity schemes for improving the uplink performance with multiple transmitting antennas at the base station have been suggested. These transmit diversity approaches using multiple transmitting antennas not only improve the link performance by effecting diversity but also provide an economic advantage over adopting multiple receiving antennas to terminals, since a base station serves a plurality of terminals.
Methods of exploiting diversity with multiple transmitting antennas are largely categorized into the following two types: time-space coding without information about channel conditions, proposed by S. M. Alamouti (“A Simple Transmitter Diversity Scheme for Wireless Communication”, IEEE J. Select. Areas Comm., Vol 16, pp. 1451-58, Oct. 1998), and feedback of channel condition information from a receiver (3GGP, “Physical Layer Procedures (FDD)”, Tech. Spec., Doc. #: 3G TS 25.214 version 3.0.0, Oct. 1999, also available from http://www.3gpp.org). According to a method proposed for a next-generation system in the feedback approach, information about a channel state is obtained from a receiver and optimum antenna weights of multiple transmitting antennas are calculated from the information and fed back to the transmitter. Since an optimum antenna weight depending on a channel state is applied to the multiple transmit antennas, this feedback approach is known to exhibit excellent performance compared with the time-space coding approach. Furthermore, as the number of transmitting antennas increases, the performance is improved in proportion to the increase in number. However, the feedback approach has a drawback in that channel capacity required for feedback must increase in the event of using multiple transmitting antennas since the amount of information required for feedback increases in proportion to the number of transmitting antennas. Furthermore, an increase in the amount of information due to an increase in the number of transmitting antennas increases a time taken for feedback, i.e., a delay time. In this case, a probable change in a channel state during feedback may significantly degrade the performance. Thus, the amount of feedback information is of great concern in exploiting multiple transmitting antenna diversity. In general, there is a limit in the capacity of the channel used for feedback, and a delay increases as much as the amount of feedback information does. Thus, the feedback approach in which a number of transmitting antennas are adopted involves channel capacity restrictions and delay increase. Accordingly, it is highly desirable to reduce the amount of feedback information.