A Geometric Framework for Analyzing the Performance of Multiple-Antenna Systems under Finite-Rate Feedback

摘要

We study the performance of multiple-antenna systems under finite-rate feedback of some function of the current channel realization from a channel-aware receiver to the transmitter. Our analysis is based on a novel geometric paradigm whereby the feedback information is modeled as a source distributed over a Riemannian manifold. While the right singular vectors of the channel matrix and the subspace spanned by them are located on the traditional Stiefel and Grassmann surfaces, the optimal input covariance matrix is located on a new manifold of positive semi-definite matrices - specified by rank and trace constraints - called the Pn manifold. The geometry of these three manifolds is studied in detail; in particular, the precise series expansion for the volume of geodesic balls over the Grassmann and Stiefel manifolds is obtained. Using these geometric results, the distortion incurred in quantizing sources using either a sphere-packing or a random code over an arbitrary manifold is quantified. Perturbative expansions are used to evaluate the susceptibility of the ergodic information rate to the quality of feedback information, and thereby to obtain the tradeoff of the achievable rate with the number of feedback bits employed. For a given system strategy, the gap between the achievable rates in the infinite and finite-rate feedback cases is shown to be $O(2^{-rac{2N_f}{N}})$ for Grassmann feedback and $O(2^{-rac{N_f}{N}})$ for other cases, where $N$ is the dimension of the manifold used for quantization and $N_f$ is the number of bits used by the receiver per block for feedback. The geometric framework developed enables the results to hold for arbitrary distributions of the channel matrix and extends to all covariance computation strategies including, waterfilling in the short-term/long-term power constraint case, antenna selection and other rank-limited scenarios that could not be analyzed using previous probabilistic approaches.