MU-MIMO Beamforming With Limited Channel Data Samples

Channel State Information (CSI) is a critical piece of information for MU-MIMO beamforming. However, CSI estimation errors are inevitable in practice. The random and uncertain nature of CSI estimation errors poses significant challenges to MU-MIMO beamforming. State-of-the-art works addressing such a CSI uncertainty can be categorized into model-based and data-driven works, both of which have limitations when providing a performance guarantee to the users. In contrast, this paper presents Limited Sample-based Beamforming (LSBF)—a novel approach to MU-MIMO beamforming that only uses a limited number of CSI data samples (without assuming any knowledge of channel distributions). Thanks to the use of CSI data samples, LSBF enjoys flexibility similar to data-driven approaches and can provide a theoretical guarantee to the users—a major strength of model-based approaches. To achieve both, LSBF employs chance-constrained programming (CCP) and utilizes the ∞-Wasserstein ambiguity set to bridge the unknown CSI distribution with limited CSI samples. Through problem decomposition and a novel bilevel formulation for each subproblem based on limited CSI data samples, LSBF solves each subproblem with a binary search and convex approximation. We show that LSBF significantly improves the network performance while providing a probabilistic data rate guarantee to the users. © 2024 IEEE.