Updating Beamformers to Respond to Changes in Users

Abstract: We consider a multi-user multiple-input single-output downlink system that provides each user with a prespecified level of quality-of-service. The base station (BS) designs the beamformers so that each user receives a certain signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR). In contrast to most of the available literature in the beamforming field, we focus on the required modifications when the system changes. We specifically study three cases: (i) user entering the system, (ii) user leaving the system, and (iii) a change in the SINR target. We do so in order to avoid designing the entire system from scratch for every change in the requirements. In each of the three cases, we describe the modifications required to the beamforming directions and the power loading. We consider maximum ratio transmission (MRT), zero-forcing (ZF) and the optimal beamformers. The proposed modifications provide performance that is either exact or very close to that obtained when we redesign the entire system, while having much lower computational cost.