Grassmannian beamforming for MIMO amplify-and-forward relaying

We consider the problem of beamforming codebook design for limited feedback half-duplex multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward (AF) relay system. In the first part of the paper, the direct link between the source and the destination is ignored. Assuming perfect channel state information (CSI), we show that the source and the relay should map their signals to the dominant right singular vectors of the source-relay and relay-destination channels. For the limited feedback scenario, we prove the appropriateness of Grassmannian codebooks as the source and relay beamforming codebooks based on the distributions of the optimal source and relay beamforming vectors. In the second part of the paper, the direct link is considered in the problem model. Assuming perfect CSI, we derive the optimization problem that identifies the optimal source beamforming vector and show that the solution to this problem is uniformly distributed on the unit sphere for independent and identically distributed (i.i.d) Rayleigh channels. For the limited feedback scenario, we justify the appropriateness of Grassmannian codebooks for quantizing the optimal source beamforming vector based on its distribution. Finally, a modified quantization scheme is presented, which introduces a negligible penalty in the system performance but significantly reduces the required number of feedback bits.