Abstract
This letter investigates the structure of the optimal spatial multiplex scheme in a multiuser multiantenna wireless fading environment. Based on a sum-capacity criterion, this letter shows that the optimal transmission strategy in an uplink or downlink channel with n antennas at the base-station involves more than n users at the same time. In particular, when remote users are equipped with m antennas each, the maximum number of data streams is shown to be upper bounded by n2, with each user transmitting or receiving up to m2 data streams. This gives a dimension-counting interpretation for multiuser diversity. Multiple antennas at the base-station increases the total number of dimensions, thus allowing more users to transmit and receive at the same time. By contrast, multiple antennas at the remote terminal allow a single user to occupy multiple dimensions, which increases its transmission rate, but also has the potential effect of precluding simultaneous transmission by other users

This publication has 13 references indexed in Scilit: