IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 59, NO.

1, JANUARY 2010 225

Low-Rate-Feedback-Assisted Beamforming and
Power Control for MIMO-OFDM Systems
Filippo Zuccardi Merli, Xiaodong Wang, Fellow, IEEE, and Giorgio Matteo Vitetta, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper proposes a novel solution to the prob-
lem of beamforming and power control in the downlink of
a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-
division multiplexing (OFDM) system. This solution is developed in
two steps. First, we describe an adaptive beamforming technique
that, using a stochastic gradient method, maximizes the power
delivered to a mobile terminal. In the proposed solution, perturbed
precoding matrices are time multiplexed in the information signal
transmitted to a mobile terminal; then, the mobile terminal in-
forms the transmitter, via a single feedback bit, about the pertur-
bation delivering the larger power. This approach does not need
pilot symbols and uses quasiMonte Carlo methods to generate
the required perturbations with the relevant advantages of im-
proving the downlink spectral efciency and reducing the system
complexity with respect to other competing solutions. Then, we
propose a novel power-control algorithm that, selecting a proper
transmission energy level from a set of possible values, aims to
minimize the average bit error rate. This set of levels is generated
on the basis of the channel statistics and a long-term constraint
on the average transmission power. Numerical results evidence
the robustness of the proposed algorithms in a dynamic fading
environment.
Index TermsAdaptive transmissions, beamforming, low-rate
feedback, multiple-inputmultiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), power control, quasi
Monte Carlo (QMC), stochastic gradient algorithm.
I. INTRODUCTION
O
VER THE PAST FEW years, multiple-inputmultiple-
output (MIMO) communication techniques have received
substantial attention, since they can offer high data rates
over multipath Rayleigh fading channels [1]. At the same
time, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) has
attracted increasing interest due to its robustness against
frequency-selective fading and its exibility [2]. For these
reasons, MIMO-OFDM techniques have been adopted in
the standards of many emerging wireless systems, such as
Manuscript received January 8, 2009; revised June 22, 2009. First published
September 9, 2009; current version published January 20, 2010. This paper
was presented in part at the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and
Computers, Pacic Grove, CA, November 47, 2007. The review of this paper
was coordinated by Dr. C. Ling.
F. Z. Merli was with the Department of Information Engineering, University
of Modena and Reggio Emilia, 41100 Modena, Italy. He is now with KPMG,
20124 Milano, Italy (e-mail: zuccardimerli.lippo@unimo.it).
X. Wang is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia Uni-
versity, New York, NY 10027 USA (e-mail: wangx@ee.columbia.edu).
G. M. Vitetta is with the Department of Information Engineering, University
of Modena and Reggio Emilia, 41100 Modena, Italy (e-mail: vitetta.giorgio@
unimo.it).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TVT.2009.2031970
Third-Generation Partnership Project long-term evolution and
WiMax, and are considered the natural choice for the imple-
mentation of the next-generation mobile wireless systems to
achieve high spectral efciency at acceptable computational
complexity [3].
Different techniques have been proposed in the technical
literature to allow an efcient use of the available energy and
spectrum resources in MIMO systems. Most of the research
in this area has focused on space-time coding (STC), exploit-
ing the independent modes offered by a MIMO propagation
channel to obtain multiple spatial channels for capacity en-
hancement [4]. However, STC usually represents a form of
a blind technique, in the sense that it requires no knowledge
of the forward channel state at the transmitter side. Recently,
other signal processing methods have been proposed to improve
the performance of MIMO systems; in particular, a substantial
body of literature has focused on adaptive transmission schemes
multiplexing the transmitted data vectors with appropriate pre-
coding matrices to transmit directional signals (beams) [5]. This
approach, which is known as beamforming, aims to transmit the
energy in the direction of the main channel modes on the basis
of the channel state information available at the transmitter
side. This allows increasing the coverage area or capacity of
a wireless link without changing the air interface or even
increasing the transmit power. Some beamforming techniques
for OFDM systems have recently been proposed in [6] and [7].
In particular, [6] describes various beamforming techniques for
multiple-input single-output (MISO) OFDM; they exploit both
time- and frequency-domain channel correlations for the design
of the precoding codebook and the tracking in a time-varying
scenario. A multistage beamforming scheme employing three
weight matrices and based on an iterative algorithm has been
proposed in [7] for an MIMO-OFDM system. However, all
these strategies have been devised under the restrictive as-
sumption that the downlink and the uplink channels are almost
the same, i.e., they can be used in time-division duplexing
applications. Unluckily, due to generally uncorrelated uplink
and downlink channels in frequency-division duplexing (FDD)
systems, the antenna array weights used for the uplink in
a communication system are, in general, not suitable for its
downlink. To overcome this problem, an interesting solution
has been proposed in [8] and [9] for a single-carrier wireless
system. It employs some feedback information from a mobile
terminal (MT) to the serving base station (BS) to adjust the
transmit weights of the BS antennas so that the receiver power
at the MT is maximized. More specically, dually perturbed
transmission weights are randomly generated at the BS and
0018-9545/$26.00 2009 IEEE
226 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY 2010
time multiplexed in pilot symbols; then, the MT informs the
BS about the perturbation delivering greater power. The use of
limited feedback information [8] for beamforming applications
has also recently been adopted in [10] to devise a power-control
procedure for an FDD system.
A more efcient exploitation of the available resources is
obtained by combining beamforming with a power-control
strategy. As far as we know, the joint problem of power control
and beamforming in MIMO systems has been investigated in
[11] only, where, however, a single-carrier system has been
considered, and it has been assumed that the downlink and
uplink channels are the same.
The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the approach
to adaptive beamforming proposed in [8] and [9] for single-
carrier communications is revisited and modied, extending it
to a multicarrier (OFDM) transmission and adopting a novel
scheme for subspace tracking and the random generation proce-
dure of Gaussian perturbations. In fact, the proposed algorithm
for subspace tracking processes the received signal samples
associated with information symbols, thus avoiding the use of
specic pilot symbols; this improves both the system efciency
and the tracking capability in a time-varying scenario with
respect to [8] and [9]. Moreover, the algorithm for generating
Gaussian perturbations proposed in [8] and [9] is replaced
with a deterministic perturbation method based on quasiMonte
Carlo (QMC) methods [12], with the relevant advantages of
a substantial complexity reduction and, at the same time,
improved performance. The second technical contribution of-
fered by this paper is represented by a novel power-control
scheme enhancing the performance of a MIMO-OFDM system
that can easily be combined with our beamforming technique.
The devised power-control strategy selects a proper level of
the transmitting energy from a list of possible candidates to
minimize the bit error rate (BER). This list is generated on
the basis of the channel statistics and a long-term constraint
on the average transmission power. Note that this approach is
conceptually related to that proposed in [10], where, however,
the power control procedure minimizes the outage probability
in a single-carrier transmission over a fading relay channel in
the absence of adaptive antennas.
This paper is organized as follows. The signal and channel
models are illustrated in Section II. The proposed low-rate-
feedback-assisted beamforming and power-control schemes are
described in Sections III and IV, respectively. Some perfor-
mance results are discussed in Section V. Finally, Section VI
offers some conclusions.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
We consider the downlink transmission in a MIMO-OFDM
system employing N
T
transmit antennas at the BS and N
R
receive antennas at the MT. The block diagram of the transmit-
ter is illustrated in Fig. 1. Since the proposed scheme operates
on a symbol-by-symbol basis, our observation interval can be
restricted to the transmission of a single OFDM symbol; for this
reason, the symbol index is neglected in the following. Trans-
mitter processing can be summarized as follows. The input data
stream is mapped into a sequence of M-ary phase-shift keying
Fig. 1. BS transmitter block diagram in a MIMO-OFDM system.
or M-ary quadratic-amplitude modulation (M-QAM) symbols
(where M denotes the constellation size); this sequence is
turned into a series of nonoverlapping blocks (through serial-
to-parallel conversion), each consisting of N
u
symbols, where
N
u
represents the number of useful subcarriers. Then, N
vc
=
N N
u
virtual carriers are inserted in each block, resulting
in an N-dimensional vector a

= [a
0
, a
1
, . . . , a
N1
]
T
, where
a
n
represents the channel symbol associated with the nth
subcarrier. These data blocks are fed to an adaptive beamform-
ing algorithm operating on a subcarrier-by-subcarrier basis.
In other words, for the symbol transmitted over the nth sub-
carrier, the algorithm generates an N
T
-dimensional complex
weight vector w
n

= w
n,1
, w
n,2
, . . . , w
n,N
T
]
T
, where w
n,i
is
the weight for the ith transmit antenna. The signal transmitted
from the N
T
antennas over the nth subcarrier frequency is then
w
n
a
n
. This technique, which is employed for each subcarrier,
produces a parallel stream of N
T
vectors (each consisting of N
elements), which are fed to a bank of N
T
OFDM modulators
where they undergo an Nth-order inverse discrete Fourier
transform (IDFT) followed by cyclic-prex (CP) insertion,
parallel-to-serial conversion, and transmit ltering. In the fol-
lowing, we assume that N
cp
is the CP length, that the impulse
response p(t) of the transmit lter is time limited to the interval
(N
p
T
s
, N
p
T
s
) (where T
s
is the channel symbol interval, and
N
p
denotes half of the duration of p(t) in symbol intervals), and
that its Fourier transformP(f) is the root of a raised cosine with
roll-off so that N
u
= int[N(1 )] [13].
The OFDMsignal is transmitted over a wide-sense stationary
uncorrelated scattering multipath fading channel. The tapped-
delay-line model
h
i,j
(t)

=
L1

l=0
h
i,j
[l] (t lT
s
) (1)
is adopted for the channel impulse response between the ith
transmit antenna (i = 1, . . . , N
T
) and the jth receive antenna
(j = 1, . . . , N
R
). Here, (t) denotes the Dirac delta function, L
is the number of channel distinct taps, and h
i,j
[l] is the complex
gain of the lth tap. We also assume that 1) the channel is
static over each OFDM symbol interval (quasi-static channel)
and that 2) N
cp
2N
p
+L 1 so that interblock interference
is avoided in the detection of each OFDM symbol. At the
MERLI et al.: LOW-RATE-FEEDBACK-ASSISTED BEAMFORMING AND POWER CONTROL FOR MIMO-OFDM SYSTEMS 227
MT, after matched ltering and sampling,
1
the N samples
collected at the jth receive antenna undergo an Nth-order
discrete Fourier transform(DFT) producing the N-dimensional
vector r
j

= [r
j
[0], r
j
[1], . . . , r
j
[N 1]]
T
. It is not difcult to
show that this vector can be expressed as
r
j
=
ME
b
N
T
N
T

i=1
W
i
AF
L
h
i,j
+n
j
(2)
where A

= diag{a
n
, n = 0, 1, . . . , N 1} is an N N di-
agonal matrix containing all the elements of a along its
main diagonal, h
i,j

= [h
i,j
[0], h
i,j
[1], . . . , h
i,j
[L 1]]
T
col-
lects the channel gains of h
i,j
(t) [see (1)], and F
L
is an
N L DFT matrix with [F
L
]
p,q
= exp[j2pq/N], p =
0, 1, . . . , N 1, and q = 0, 1, . . . , L 1. Moreover, W
i

=
diag{w
0,i
w
1,i
, . . . , w
N1,i
} is an N N diagonal matrix col-
lecting the complex weights applied to the OFDM symbol sent
by the ith transmit antenna, E
b
is the total average transmitted
energy per information bit, and z
j

= [z
j
[0], z
j
[1], . . . , z
j
[N
1]]
T
N
c
(0
N
,
2
z
I
N
) is an N-dimensional complex Gaussian
noise vector
2
(generally speaking, the notation N
c
(a, B) in-
dicates a complex Gaussian vector having mean vector a and
covariance matrix B).
To simplify the derivation of our beamforming and
power-control algorithms, we convert (2) into a subcarrier-
based one. Specically, the N
R
-dimensional vector r[n]

=
[r
1
[n], r
2
[n], . . . , r
N
R
[n]]
T
containing the samples from all the
receive antennas at the nth subcarrier can be expressed as
r[n] =
ME
b
N
T
H
n
w
n
a
n
+z
n
(3)
where z
n
N
c
(0,
2
z
I
N
R
) is an N
R
-dimensional com-
plex Gaussian noise vector, and H
n
= [H
i,j
[n]] (with i =
1, . . . , N
T
and j = 1, . . . , N
R
) represents an N
R
N
T
matrix
collecting the responses of the MIMO channel at the nth sub-
carrier frequency. Note that the N-dimensional vector H
i,j

=
[H
i,j
[0], H
i,j
[1], . . . , H
i,j
[N 1]]
T
collecting the values of the
channel frequency response between the ith transmit and the jth
receive antennas is given by [14]
H
i,j
= F
L
h
i,j
. (4)
Given the received signal vectors r[n], n = 0, 1, . . . , N 1,
in (3), at an MT, we are interested in devising algorithms
3
to 1) update the beamforming vector w
n
and 2) set a proper
energy level at the BS. In Sections III and IV, we show that
these objectives can be, respectively, achieved by employing
beamforming and power-control algorithms operating on a
symbol-by-symbol basis and each using a single-feedback-bit
scheme. In the derivation of the proposed algorithms, we focus
1
The rst N
cp
samples (i.e., the samples associated with the CP) are
discarded from each OFDM time interval, and ideal timing is assumed.
2
In the following, the noise variance
2
z
is assumed known at the re-
ceive side.
3
Both algorithms operate on a symbol-by-symbol basis, and each of them
uses a feedback bit from the MT.
on an FDD scenario, where the downlink channel is known at
the MT and unknown at the BS. Moreover, we assume that
the channel responses associated with distinct transmit/receive
antenna pairs are spatially uncorrelated. Finally, note that, since
the proposed schemes operate on a subcarrier-by-subcarrier
basis, in what follows, our analysis is restricted to a single
OFDM subcarrier.
III. SINGLE-BIT-FEEDBACK ALGORITHM
FOR BEAMFORMING
In this section, we propose an algorithm that updates the
weight vector w
n
in (3) at the BS, based on the stochastic
gradient algorithm to track the dominant eigenvectors of the
MIMO channel. Various enhancements to this algorithm are
then discussed.
A. Basic Algorithm
To begin, we dene the cost function J
n
for the nth
subcarrier
J
n

= H
n
w
n

2
F
(5)
where
F
is the Frobenious norm and introduce the
constraint
w
H
n
w
n
= 1. (6)
The algorithm we propose for beamforming aims to ac-
complish subspace tracking through the maximization of J
n
subject to (6); this produces the weight vector delivering larger
power [8]. Note that the maximization of (5) does not admit
a closed-form solution because of the large cardinality of w
n
,
and an iterative technique based on the stochastic gradient and
requiring feedback from MTs has been proposed in [8], which
unluckily requires the transmission of pilot symbols.
In this section, we employ the stochastic gradient algorithm,
but in a different fashion. In fact, our target is devising a
beamforming technique that can directly exploit the weighted
information symbols, therefore avoiding the use of pilot sig-
naling and providing a substantial gain in terms of system
efciency. Our adaptive beamforming algorithm, in its basic
version, evolves through the following steps: 1) probing the
wireless channel via weighted information symbols; 2) gen-
erating (based on probing results) and transmitting feedback
information from the MT; and 3) updating the weight vectors at
the BS. A detailed description of these steps is provided below.
Probing: The tracking of the vector w
n
is accomplished
at the BS via a feedback-based algorithm, which requires no
knowledge about the downlink channel. The algorithm exploits
the OFDM frame structure at the BS. Specically, it perturbs
consecutive channel symbols with different probing vectors
and transmits them over the channel. Then, the MT receiver,
using the channel state information, generates feedback infor-
mation indicating the preferred direction (sign) to apply to the
perturbation and sends it to the BS. The weight adaptation is
periodically carried out via probing and feedback generation
(further details are given below). In addition, a single bit for
228 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY 2010
each subcarrier (or a group of adjacent subcarriers, as will be
stated below) is transmitted on the feedback channel.
The algorithm for the weight update is described as follows.
We assume that the symbols a
e
n
and a
o
n
are transmitted over two
consecutive (even and odd, respectively) OFDM symbols on the
nth subcarrier after undergoing beamforming with the distinct
weight vectors w
e
n
and w
o
n
, respectively. Then, the received
signal associated with these symbols is processed at the MT
to generate binary feedback; this indicates which of the two
weights is preferable, in terms of received power. The time
slot lasting two OFDM symbols and encompassing both the
perturbation measurement and the feedback interval is dubbed
the perturbation probing period (PPP) in the following. In each
PPP, the weight vectors are computed as
w
e
n
=
w
b
n
+p
n
w
b
n
+p
n

(7)
w
o
n
=
w
b
n
p
n
w
b
n
p
n

(8)
respectively, with n = 0, 1, . . . , N 1. Here, p
n

N
c
(0, I
N
T
) is an N
T
-dimensional test perturbation, is
the adaptation rate, and w
b
n
is the preferred weight matrix
selected in the previous PPP.
4
Note that 1) the normalizations
in (7) and (8) ensure that the transmitted power is constrained
and that 2) both the BS and the MT must be synchronized to
generate the probing vectors w
e
n
and w
o
n
because the MT needs
them for data detection.
Feedback Generation: Let H
e
n
and H
o
n
denote the chan-
nel gain matrices over the even and odd OFDM intervals,
respectively, of a given PPP. In that PPP, the MT estimates
the composite channel of (H
e
n
, H
o
n
) with the corresponding
transmission weights w
e
n
(7) and w
o
n
(8). Then, the gradient
extraction of the feedback binary digit
b
n
=sign
_
H
e
n
w
e
n

2
F
H
o
n
w
o
n

2
F
_
, n=0, 1, . . . , N1
(9)
maximizing (5) (i.e., providing the largest received power) is
accomplished for the nth subcarrier. Note that (9) does not
need pilot symbols to generate the feedback bit like in [8]
and [9], but it just needs an estimate of the channel, which,
however, must be known even in the solutions in [8] and
[9], when the information symbols are detected. It is also
important to point out that the effects of imperfect channel state
information are automatically compensated for when selecting
the probing vectors; in other words, the presence of probing
vectors makes the receiver less sensitive to channel-estimation
errors.
When the BS receives the binary feedback (9), at the be-
ginning of the next PPP, it operates according to the following
steps: 1) It selects the new vector w
b
n
in (7) and (8) according
the following updating rule:
w
b
n
=
_
w
e
n
, if b
n
= +1
w
o
n
, if b
n
= 1
(10)
4
Note that w
b
n
is either the odd perturbation or the even one selected from
the previous PPP.
2) it generates a new probing perturbation vector p
n
; and
3) it updates w
e
n
and w
o
n
using (7) and (8), respectively. Note
that 1) the feedback bit is sent to the BS every D PPPs;
2) the specic value of D depends on the application, partic-
ularly on the expected maximum Doppler shift; 3) the update
in (10) involves a step of xed magnitude in the direction
of the largest achievable power at the receiver; and 4) the
update algorithm, in its basic formulation, can be interpreted
as an implementation of the stochastic gradient algorithm,
performing a steepest descent adaptation to maximize the cost
function (5).
B. System Issues and Enhancements
Several system implementation issues and enhancements
about the proposed beamforming algorithm are worth dis-
cussing. They concern some key aspects of complexity, exi-
bility, and optimization, as illustrated below.
1) Subcarrier grouping: Equations (7)(9) can be adopted
for subspace tracking for each data subcarrier at the price,
however, of substantial complexity. In particular, note
that both the processing load and the data rate of the
feedback channel linearly increase with the overall num-
ber of subcarriers. A simple technique to mitigate these
problems is based on the technique of subcarrier grouping
[15]. This means that the OFDM tones are partitioned in
groups, each consisting of Gadjacent subcarriers, and the
proposed adaptive algorithm is applied only to a reference
subcarrier of each group, e.g., to that corresponding to
the center of the group. Then, the weight vector evaluated
for the reference tone of each group is also used for
the beamforming on the other subcarriers of the same
group. It is expected that this technique works well if the
bandwidth of each group is close to the channel coherence
bandwidth, i.e.,
G/NT
s
1/LT
s
1 (11)
so that it is reasonable to select G = N/L. The pro-
posed solution reduces the computational complexity by a
factor N/G. Moreover, simulation results have evidenced
that its use does not appreciably degrade the system per-
formance with respect to that achievable in the absence of
subcarrier grouping. Finally, note that the weight vectors
and the probing vector that appears in (7) and (8) must be
generated only once for each group.
2) QMC methods: The performance provided by the pro-
posed beamforming algorithm depends on the technique
adopted to generate the perturbation vector p
n
in (7)
and (8). A criticism expressed about classic Monte Carlo
(MC) methods [16] is that entirely random points tend to
form gaps and clusters, and therefore, they do not explore
the sample space in the most uniform way. To avoid
this drawback, here, we propose to employ the QMC
techniques [12]. These techniques are based on the idea of
using more regularly distributed points in the generation
of a perturbation, therefore exploring a more regular
MERLI et al.: LOW-RATE-FEEDBACK-ASSISTED BEAMFORMING AND POWER CONTROL FOR MIMO-OFDM SYSTEMS 229
Fig. 2. Cost function J (20) versus the step size of the proposed beamform-
ing algorithm. Various values of the normalized Doppler bandwidth B
D
NT
s
are considered.
Fig. 3. BER performance versus the step size of the proposed beamforming
algorithm. Various values of the normalized Doppler bandwidth B
D
NT
s
are
considered.
space than a random point set associated with the MC
approach. Moreover, the QMC points can be computed
ofine and stored in a lookup table, thus avoiding the
random-number-generation calculations at runtime. Our
computer simulations have led to the conclusion that
QMCmethods can offer not only a substantial complexity
saving but a 1-dB energy gain as well. The detailed
procedure for generating the QMC points can be found
in [12].
3) Quantized beamforming: The single-bit-feedback algo-
rithm described in the previous paragraph aims to adapt
the transmit antenna beamforming in a mobile scenario.
Even if our simulation results evidence that the single-
bit-feedback adaptive beamforming algorithm converges
in the presence of a random initialization (see Figs. 2 and
3 and Section V), a proper initialization is expected to
signicantly improve the convergence speed. To that end,
we can select the initial value of w
b
n
that appears in (7)
and (8) from a predesigned codebook. In practice, the MT
selects from such a codebook the entry that best matches
the channel state, and the MT sends the entry index
to the transmitter through a low-rate-feedback channel.
Generally speaking, the procedure for the selection of
such an entry from a codebook is more complicated and
requires a more intensive processing than our single-bit-
feedback beamforming algorithm. In the following, the
former is dubbed slow beamforming, whereas the latter is
dubbed fast beamforming. It is suggested to partition the
information transmission into frames, and the adaptive
beamforming procedure should periodically be initialized
at the beginning of each frame to avoid consistent per-
formance degradation if a wrong update direction has
been selected by the aforementioned fast procedure. After
the initialization phase, the weight vector will be succes-
sively rened using the fast-beamforming procedure. It
is worth mentioning that various quantized beamforming
strategies can be adopted to generate a proper codebook,
quantizing the possible values of the weight matrix. Some
of these strategies are illustrated in [17] and are based
on maximizing the mean-squared weighted inner product
between the optimum and the quantized beamforming
vectors. A quantized codebook design based on channel
distribution has also been proposed in [18].
Finally, we summarize the single-bit-feedback adaptive
beamforming algorithm for MIMO-OFDM in Table I, which
also species where each step is carried out.
IV. SINGLE-BIT-FEEDBACK ALGORITHM
FOR POWER CONTROL
In this section, we describe an adaptive power control algo-
rithm that can easily be combined with the adaptive beamform-
ing technique
5
described in the previous section to improve
system performance. The proposed technique is based on the
idea of quantizing the transmit energy for each subcarrier; in
practice, we assume that this energy can take one into two
distinct levels E
1
and E
2
. Level selection is accomplished by
an MT on a subcarrier-by-subcarrier (or group-by-group) basis,
exploiting the channel state information. The MT sends binary-
feedback information to the serving BS.
Let us dene the parameter

= w
H
n
H
H
n
H
n
w
n
(12)
measuring the usable signal power at the receiver at the nth
subcarrier frequency (see [9, p. 1157, eq. (4)]); note that this
parameter refers to the beamformed channel resulting from the
combination of the physical channel H
n
and the transmission
beamforming vector w
n
. We propose to adopt the rule
E
n
=
_
E
1
, if
n
<
E
2
, if
n
>
, n = 0, . . . , N 1 (13)
for the selection of the energy per bit E
n
assigned to the nth
subcarrier. Here, is a threshold quantizing the transmitted
energy to E
1
and E
2
. We propose to select the energy levels
E
1
and E
2
and the threshold to minimize the average BER
on each subcarrier. It is important to note that these values are
constellation dependent, since the employed BER expression
depends on the adopted constellation.
6
In the following, we
5
It is worth noting that the proposed solution can be adopted in any MIMO
system employing an adaptive antenna array at the transmitter side.
6
BER formulas for some common constellations are available in [19].
230 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY 2010
TABLE I
SUMMARY OF THE PROPOSED ADAPTIVE ALGORITHM FOR BEAMFORMING
explain the basic design procedure using quaternary phase shift
keying (QPSK) as an example, even if the proposed approach
can be extended to any other constellation in a straightforward
fashion.
In a MIMO-OFDM transmission employing a QPSK con-
stellation, the SNR per bit for the nth subcarrier and the
corresponding average bit error probability are given by
SNR
n
(
n
) =
2E
b

2
z

n
(14)
P
n
=

_
0
Q
_
_
SNR
n
(x)
_
p
n
(x)dx (15)
respectively, where p
n
(x) denotes the probability density func-
tion (pdf) of
n
.
Substituting (14) in (15) and taking into account the strategy
(13) yields the bit error probability
P
n
=

_
0
Q
_
_
2E
1
x/
2
z
_
p
n
(x)dx
+

Q
_
_
2E
2
x/
2
z
_
p
n
(x)dx (16)
that we aim to minimize with respect to E
1
, E
2
, and under
the long-term energy constraint
q
1
E
1
+q
2
E
2
= E
b
(17)
with
q
1

_
0
p
n
(x)dx q
2

p
n
(x)dx. (18)
The minimization of the cost function (16) under the con-
straint (17) can be accomplished by resorting to the method
of Lagrange multipliers; the resulting technique produces es-
timates of the algorithm parameters E
1
, E
2
, and . Further
details about this procedure are given in the Appendix.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that our algorithm for sub-
carrier power control can be used for groups of subcarriers,
adopting the same approach as the beamforming algorithm. In
fact, applying the selection rule (13) on a group-by-group basis
allows a reduction of both the computational load at the receiver
and the number of feedback bits to be sent on the reverse link.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, we provide simulation results to illustrate
the performance of the proposed algorithms for both adaptive
beamforming and power control. The simulation setup is as
follows: 1) The OFDM system uses N = 256 subcarriers, and
the roll-off factor is = 0.12 so that the number of useful sub-
carriers is N
u
= 225; 2) the length of the CP and the duration
of p(t) are N
cp
= 35 and 20T
s
(i.e., N
p
= 10), respectively;
3) groups of G = 15 adjacent subcarriers are used; 4) the
system is equipped with N
T
= 4 transmit antennas at the
BS and N
R
= 2 receive antennas at the MT; 5) the SNR is
dened as E
b
/N
0
, where E
b
is the average received energy per
information bit and per antenna; 6) the channel model (1) is
characterized by L = 16 zero-mean taps (Rayleigh fading) and
the exponential power delay prole [13]

2
(l) =
1 exp(1/5)
1 exp(L/5)
exp(l/5), l = 0, 1, . . . , 15
(19)
where
2
(l) = E{|h
i,j
[l]|
2
}; 7) channel realizations are static
over each OFDM symbol interval but change from symbol
to symbol; 8) each tap of the set {h
i,j
[l], l = 0, 1, 2, . . .}
is characterized by the autocorrelation function R
h
[l] =
J
0
(2lB
D
NT
s
), where J
0
(x) is the zeroth-order Bessel func-
tion of the rst kind, and B
D
is the fading Doppler bandwidth;
9) the feedback channel used for both beamforming and power
adaptation is modeled as a binary symmetric channel with
crossover probability = 0.01.
MERLI et al.: LOW-RATE-FEEDBACK-ASSISTED BEAMFORMING AND POWER CONTROL FOR MIMO-OFDM SYSTEMS 231
Fig. 4. BER performance of various coherent receivers operating over a
Rayleigh fading channel with B
D
NT
s
= 5 10
3
. A QPSK format is used.
In our simulations, two different parameters have been
assessed in various scenarios, namely, the BER and the
parameter
J

= E
_
N1

n=0
J
n
(k)

J
n
(k)
_
(20)
providing an average indication about the cost function of
our adaptive beamforming algorithm. Here, J
n
(k) is the time-
varying value of (5) (i.e., k is a time slot index), and

J
n
(k) is
the corresponding value obtained over a static channel; note that
the performance of the algorithm improves if J
n
(k) gets closer
to J
n
(k), i.e., if the ratio of these two quantities approaches
unity. Fig. 2 represents J versus the adaptive size in (7) and
(8) for different Doppler bandwidths when the channel symbols
{a
k
[n]} belong to a QPSK constellation. These results show
that 1) as the Doppler bandwidth increases, the use of a larger
adaptation parameter is needed to track the faster changes of
the communication channel, and 2) if is properly selected, the
algorithm works well, even in a fast-varying scenario, since J
is close to unity.
Fig. 3 illustrates the BER performance versus for differ-
ent Doppler bandwidths. Note that the optimal values of
extracted from these simulations (i.e., the values minimizing
the BER curves) are the same as those provided in Fig. 2. Such
values have been adopted in the simulations to generate all the
results shown below.
Fig. 4 illustrates the BER performance for the follow-
ing OFDM receivers (all endowed with ideal channel state
information):
1) a coherent receiver, which is dubbed No BF and no
PC, working in the absence of beamforming and power-
control schemes;
Fig. 5. BER performance of various coherent receivers operating over
a Rayleigh fading channel with B
D
NT
s
= 10
3
and B
D
NT
s
= 10
2
.
A QPSK format is used.
2) a coherent receiver, which is dubbed Slow BF only, that
selects the weight vectors from a properly designed table
[20], without tracking the time variations of the channel
modes via an adaptive beamforming algorithm;
3) a coherent receiver, which is Fast BF only, that up-
dates the adaptive beamforming vectors using the al-
gorithm derived in Section III but exploits a random
initialization;
4) a coherent receiver, which is dubbed Complete BF, that
combines the proposed beamforming algorithm with the
slow beamforming algorithm in [20] for initialization;
5) a coherent receiver, which is dubbed Complete BF &
PC, that combines our beamforming scheme with the
power-control strategy proposed in Section IV.
In generating the data in Fig. 4, the following assumptions
have been made: 1) The channel symbols {a
k
[n]} belong to
a QPSK constellation; 2) the normalized Doppler bandwidth
B
D
NT
s
is equal to 10
2
; and 3) when the slow beamform-
ing is adopted, the transmission is partitioned into frames,
and the initialization process for adaptive beamforming is run
every 80 OFDM symbols, resulting in a reset rate R
r
= 1/80.
These results evidence that the receiver adopting the slow-
beamforming technique and using the proposed beamforming
scheme provide a gain of 4 and 6 dB, respectively, over the
system not employing any beamforming strategy. It is also
interesting to note that if the transmission is partitioned into
frames and the proposed technique is initialized with a slow
reset, a 4-dB gain can be obtained over that using only our
beamforming algorithm; a further 4-dB gain is provided by
adding our power-control algorithm.
The simulation results shown in Fig. 5 refer to an OFDM
scheme employing QPSK modulation and adopting the full
232 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY 2010
Fig. 6. BER performance of various coherent receivers operating over a
Rayleigh fading channel with B
D
NT
s
= 5 10
3
and B
D
NT
s
= 5 10
2
.
A 16-QAM format is used.
beamforming scheme (with both slow and fast techniques)
with and without our power-control strategy. Two multipath
fading scenarios have been considered: one with normalized
Doppler bandwidth B
D
NT
s
= 10
3
and the other one with
B
D
NT
s
= 10
2
. All the other system parameters are exactly
the same as those listed for the previous gures. It is worth
noting that 1) an increase in the Doppler bandwidth from
B
D
NT
s
= 10
3
to B
D
NT
s
= 10
2
produces a performance
loss of about 7 dB at BER = 10
6
in the considered sys-
tems; 2) even in a fast-fading scenario (B
D
NT
s
= 10
2
), a
6-dB performance gain can be achieved using the proposed
beamforming solution over a system not exploiting adaptive
antennas, and an additional 4-dB gain is provided by our power-
control algorithm; and 3) a larger performance gain can be
obtained in a slow-fading scenario.
Since the power-control algorithm is constellation depen-
dent, we also assessed its performance with various modulation
formats. Fig. 6 shows the error performance offered by an
OFDM coherent receiver when a 16-QAM modulation in used
in the presence of B
D
NT
s
= 5 10
3
and B
D
NT
s
= 5 10
2
.
The receivers operate in a scenario equivalent to that described
for Fig. 5. These results show that the proposed beamforming
and power-control schemes provide substantial performance
gains with both fast- and slow-fading channels.
Remark: All the simulation results analyzed earlier refer to
single-bit-feedback adaptive schemes for both beamforming
and power control. It is worth pointing out that, in principle,
the proposed algorithms can be used with multiple-bit-feedback
schemes. Our simulation results have evidenced, however, that
a small energy gain (i.e., a fraction of a decibel) is offered by
the use of a feedback with multiple bits in place of that using
a single bit. For this reason and due to space limitations, the
case of feedback with multiple bits has not been taken into
consideration.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel adaptive beamforming technique for
the downlink of a MIMO-OFDM system has been derived.
In the proposed approach, the transmitter generates probing
beamforming vectors using QMC methods. The receiver, using
an algorithm based on a stochastic gradient method, produces
binary feedback informing the transmitter which beamforming
vector, delivering the largest power, must be used in the next
signaling intervals. It has also been shown how the proposed
beamforming method can be integrated with a power-control
scheme based on a single-bit feedback scheme. A combination
of both algorithms results in a MIMO-OFDM system jointly
tracking the channel time variations and optimizing the avail-
able transmitted energy. Simulation results have evidenced that
the proposed solutions offer excellent performance in scenarios
affected by slow and fast fading.
APPENDIX
Here, we outline the procedure for computing the parameters
E
1
, E
2
, and , which are required by the adaptive power-
control algorithm in Section IV.
The application of the method of Lagrange multipliers to the
minimization of the cost function (16) under the constraint (17)
involves the denition of the Lagrangian function
L =

_
0
Q
_
_
2E
1
x/
2
z
_
p
n
(x)dx
+

Q
_
_
2E
2
x/
2
z
_
p
n
(x)dx
+q
1
E
1
+q
2
E
2
E
b
(21)
and requires the solution of the system
_

_
dL
dE
1
=
1
2
z

E
1

_
0

xe

E
1
x

2
z
p
n
(x)dx +q
1
= 0
dL
dE
2
=
1
2
z

E
2

_
0

xe

E
2
x

2
z
p
n
(x)dx +q
2
= 0
dL
d
= Q
__
2E
1

2
z
_
+E
1
Q
__
2E
2

2
z
_
E
2
= 0
dL
d
= q
1
E
1
+q
2
E
2
E
b
= 0.
(22)
From the third equation of (22), it is easily inferred that
=
Q
_
_
2E
2
/
2
z
_
Q
_
_
2E
1
/
2
z
_
E
1
E
2
(23)
whereas from the fourth one, it is inferred that
E
2
=
E
b
q
1
E
1
q
2
. (24)
MERLI et al.: LOW-RATE-FEEDBACK-ASSISTED BEAMFORMING AND POWER CONTROL FOR MIMO-OFDM SYSTEMS 233
Substituting (23) and (24) in the rst and second equations
of (22) yields the following nonlinear system:
_
f(E
1
, ) = 0
g(E
1
, ) = 0
(25)
involving E
1
and only.
This system can iteratively be solved using the
NewtonRaphson method; the resulting procedure generates a
sequence of estimates {(E
(i)
1
,
(i)
), i = 1, 2, . . .} of the couple
(E
1
, ) of unknown parameters. However, to simplify the
application of this method, in our algorithm, the functions
f(E
1
, ) and g(E
1
, ) are replaced by their rst-order Taylor
approximations
f(E
1
, ) f
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
+f
E
1
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
__
E
1
E
(i)
1
_
+f

_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
__

(i)
_
(26)
g(E
1
, ) g
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
+g
E
1
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
__
E
1
E
(i)
1
_
+g

_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
__

(i)
_
(27)
around the point (E
(i)
1
,
(i)
), when computing the new couple
(E
(i+1)
1
,
(i+1)
) from the last one (E
(i)
1
,
(i)
). Here, f
x
(E, )
(g
x
(E, )) denotes the rst partial derivative of f(E
1
, )
(g(E, )) computed with respect to the variable x. The ap-
proximate representations (26) and (27) lead to the recursive
equations
E
(i+1)
1
= E
(i)
1
+
E
1
,
(i+1)
=
(i)
+

(28)
for the joint estimation of E
1
and , respectively. Here, the
vector = [
E
1
,

]
T
represents the solution of the system
J
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
= F
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
(29)
with
J
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
=
_
_
f
E
1
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
, f

_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
g
E
1
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
, g

_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
_
_
(30)
F
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
=
_
_
f
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
g
_
E
(i)
1
,
(i)
_
_
_
. (31)
Note that 1) the pdf p
n
() can be estimated (via standard
mathematical tools, e.g., see [21]) from the values taken on by
parameter
n
over multiple realizations of the communication
channel, and 2) the integrals appearing in the partial derivatives
of (30) and (31) can be solved using MC techniques.
Then, if N
it
represents the maximum number of the iter-
ations in the NewtonRaphson method and E
(0)
1
= E
b
and

(0)
= median(
n
) are selected at the rst iteration, the fol-
lowing procedure is employed for the iterative estimation of
E
1
and :
for i = 1, 2, . . . , N
it
Compute J(E
(i)
1
,
(i)
) from (30)
Compute F(E
(i)
1
,
(i)
) from (31)
Compute the new estimate E
(i+1)
1
of E
1
and
(i+1)
of
from (28)
end
Finally, E
2
is computed from (24).
REFERENCES
[1] D. N. C. Tse, P. Viswanath, and L. Zheng, Diversity-multiplexing trade-
off in multiple-access channels, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 50, no. 9,
pp. 18591874, Sep. 2004.
[2] T. Keller and L. Hanzo, Adaptive multicarrier modulation: A convenient
framework for time-frequency processing in wireless communications,
Proc. IEEE, vol. 88, no. 5, pp. 611640, Apr. 2000.
[3] H. Yang, A road to future broadband wireless access: MIMO-OFDM-
based air interface, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 5360,
Jan. 2005.
[4] D. Gesbert, M. Sha, D.-S. Shiu, P. J. Smith, and A. Naguib, From theory
to practice: An overview of MIMO space-time coded wireless systems,
IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 281302, Apr. 2003.
[5] S. Shahbazpanahi, A. B. Gershman, Z.-Q. Luo, and K. M. Wong, Ro-
bust adaptive beamforming for general-rank signal models, IEEE Trans.
Signal Process, vol. 51, no. 9, pp. 22572269, Sep. 2003.
[6] L. Liu and H. Jafarkhani, Successive transmit beamforming algorithms
for multiple-antenna OFDM systems, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun.,
vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 15121522, Apr. 2007.
[7] S. Li, D. Huang, K. B. Letaief, and Z. Zhou, Multi-stage beamforming
for coded OFDM with multiple transmit and multiple receive antennas,
IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 959969, Mar. 2007.
[8] B. C. Banister and J. R. Zeidler, Feedback assisted transmission subspace
tracking for MIMO systems, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 21, no. 3,
pp. 452463, Apr. 2003.
[9] B. C. Banister and J. R. Zeidler, A simple gradient sign algorithm for
transmit antenna weight adaption with feedback, IEEE Trans. Signal
Process, vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 11561171, May 2003.
[10] N. Ahmed, M. A. Khojastepour, A. Sabharwal, and B. Aazhang, Outage
minimization feedback for the fading relay channel, IEEE Trans. Com-
mun., vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 659669, Apr. 2006.
[11] F. R. Farrokhi, L. Tassiulas, and K. J. R. Liu, Joint optimal power con-
trol and beamforming in wireless networks using antenna arrays, IEEE
Trans. Commun., vol. 46, no. 10, pp. 13131324, Oct. 1998.
[12] D. Guo and X. Wang, Quasi-Monte Carlo ltering in nonlinear dynamic
systems, IEEE Trans. Signal Process, vol. 54, no. 6, pp. 20872098,
Jun. 2006.
[13] F. Z. Merli and G. M. Vitetta, Blind feedforward frequency estimation
for OFDM signals transmitted over multipath fading channels, in Proc.
IEEE Int. Conf. Commun., Jun. 1115, 2006, vol. 6, pp. 28812886.
[14] Y. Li, N. Seshadri, and S. Ariyavisitakul, Channel estimation for OFDM
systems with transmitter diversity in mobile wireless channels, IEEE J.
Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 461471, Mar. 1999.
[15] Z. Liu, Y. Xin, and G. B. Giannakis, Linear constellation precoding
for OFDM with maximum multipath diversity and coding gains, IEEE
Trans. Commun., vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 416427, Mar. 2003.
[16] A. Doucet and X. Wang, Monte Carlo methods for signal processing,
IEEE Signal Process Mag., vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 152170, Nov. 2005.
[17] J. C. Roh and B. D. Rao, Transmit beamforming in multiple-antenna
systems with nite rate feedback: A VQ-based approach, IEEE Trans.
Inf. Theory, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 11011112, Mar. 2006.
[18] B. Mondal and R. W. Heath, Channel adaptive quantization for limited
feedback MIMO beamforming systems, IEEE Trans. Signal Process,
vol. 54, no. 12, pp. 47174729, Dec. 2006.
[19] J. G. Proakis, Digital Communications., 4th ed. New York: McGraw-
Hill, 2001.
[20] 3GPP, R1-062650, Texas Instruments, Codebook Design for E-ULTRA
MIMO Pre-Coding.
[21] A. Papoulis and S. Unnikrishna Pillai, Probability, Random Variables and
Stochastic Processes., 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
234 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY 2010
Filippo Zuccardi Merli was born in Correggio,
Italy, in July 1980. He received the Dr. Ing. de-
gree (cum laude) in electronic engineering and the
Ph.D. degree from the University of Modena and
Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy, in 2004 and 2008,
respectively.
From 2006 to 2007, he was a Research Assis-
tant with the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Columbia University, New York, NY, focusing on
digital communication and statistical signal process-
ing. More recently, he was with Deloitte for one year,
providing technology services for both the industrial and nancial sectors.
Since October 2008, he has been a Management Consultant with KPMG,
advising clients and participating in several projects regarding information
security. His scientic interests are in the broad areas of communication theory
and information management, with applications to information technology
compliance and governance.
Xiaodong Wang (S98M98SM04F08) re-
ceived the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
He is currently with the faculty of the Depart-
ment of Electrical Engineering, Columbia Univer-
sity, New York, NY. His research interests are in the
general areas of computing, signal processing, and
communications, and he has extensively published
in these areas. Among his publications is a recent
book entitled Wireless Communication Systems: Ad-
vanced Techniques for Signal Reception (Prentice-
Hall, 2003). His current research interests include wireless communications,
statistical signal processing, and genomic signal processing.
Dr. Wang received the 1999 NSF CAREER Award and the 2001 IEEE
Communications Society and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award.
He has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
COMMUNICATIONS, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNI-
CATIONS, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, and the IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION THEORY.
Giorgio Matteo Vitetta (S89M91SM99) was
born in Reggio Calabria, Italy, in April 1966. He
received the Dr. Ing. degree (cum laude) in electronic
engineering and the Ph.D. degree fromthe University
of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 1990 and 1994, respectively.
From 1992 to 1993, he was with the University
of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, doing
research for digital communications on fading chan-
nels. From 1995 to 1998, he was a Research Fellow
with the Department of Information Engineering,
University of Pisa. From 1998 to 2001, he was an
Associate Professor of telecommunications with the Department of Information
Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy, where he
is currently a Full Professor of telecommunications. His main research interests
are in the broad area of communication theory, with particular emphasis on
coded modulation, synchronization, and channel equalization.
Dr. Vitetta is serving as an Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS
ON COMMUNICATIONS and the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS
COMMUNICATIONS.