A low-complexity space-time OFDM multiuser system

Exploiting the Fourier basis structure both in the space and the time domains, we develop a low-complexity multiuser space-time coding scheme, multiuser (MU) angle-frequency coding scheme (MU-AFCS), to properly schedule the data streams of each user with respect to its corresponding angle-frequency channel structure for downlink wireless systems. With the proposed approach, a large amount of space resource left over by one user, in clustered multipath wireless channels, can be easily identified and used by the others without serious signal collision in the space domain. In doing so, low channel capacity resulting from poor channel structures in systems, allowing only single-user transmission at a time, can be greatly boosted. The key advantage of this approach is that only limited feedback of channel state information to the transmitter is required while multiuser macro-diversity is sufficiently exploited. In addition, the complexity of the proposed approach is much lower than that of the existing ones serving similar purposes. Through theoretical analyses and computer simulations, we demonstrate that the MU-AFCS can significantly increase the channel capacity as compared to the traditional orthogonal resource division MU multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems.