(19)
(11)EP 2 945 306 B1

(12)EUROPEAN PATENT SPECIFICATION

(45)Mention of the grant of the patent:
07.11.2018 Bulletin 2018/45

(21)Application number: 13877003.7

(22)Date of filing:  17.05.2013
(51)International Patent Classification (IPC): 
H04L 1/00(2006.01)
H04B 7/0456(2017.01)
H04B 7/06(2006.01)
H04B 7/04(2017.01)
(86)International application number:
PCT/CN2013/075834
(87)International publication number:
WO 2014/134876 (12.09.2014 Gazette  2014/37)

(54)

PRECODING MATRIX INDICATION FEEDBACK METHOD, AND RECEIVING END AND TRANSMITTING END

VORCODIERUNGSMATRIXANZEIGEFEEDBACKVERFAHREN, EMPFANGSENDE UND ÜBERTRAGUNGSENDE

PROCÉDÉ DE RÉTROACTION D'INDICATION DE MATRICE DE PRÉCODAGE, ET EXTRÉMITÉ DE RÉCEPTION ET EXTRÉMITÉ D'ÉMISSION


(84)Designated Contracting States:
AL AT BE BG CH CY CZ DE DK EE ES FI FR GB GR HR HU IE IS IT LI LT LU LV MC MK MT NL NO PL PT RO RS SE SI SK SM TR

(30)Priority: 08.03.2013 WO PCT/CN2013/072358

(43)Date of publication of application:
18.11.2015 Bulletin 2015/47

(60)Divisional application:
18191215.5

(73)Proprietor: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Longgang District Shenzhen, Guangdong 518129 (CN)

(72)Inventors:
  • ZHANG, Leiming
    Shenzhen Guangdong 518129 (CN)
  • WU, Qiang
    Shenzhen Guangdong 518129 (CN)
  • LIU, Jianghua
    Shenzhen Guangdong 518129 (CN)
  • WANG, Jianguo
    Shenzhen Guangdong 518129 (CN)

(74)Representative: Gill Jennings & Every LLP 
The Broadgate Tower 20 Primrose Street
London EC2A 2ES
London EC2A 2ES (GB)


(56)References cited: : 
EP-A1- 2 485 408
CN-A- 102 164 027
CN-A- 102 594 502
WO-A2-2012/015252
CN-A- 102 301 666
US-A1- 2008 043 865
  
  • LU WU ET AL: "Codebook Design for LTE-A Downlink System", VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE (VTC FALL), 2011 IEEE, IEEE, 5 September 2011 (2011-09-05), pages 1-5, XP032029477, DOI: 10.1109/VETECF.2011.6092993 ISBN: 978-1-4244-8328-0
  
Note: Within nine months from the publication of the mention of the grant of the European patent, any person may give notice to the European Patent Office of opposition to the European patent granted. Notice of opposition shall be filed in a written reasoned statement. It shall not be deemed to have been filed until the opposition fee has been paid. (Art. 99(1) European Patent Convention).


Description

TECHNICAL FIELD



[0001] Embodiments of the present invention relate to the field of wireless communications, and in particular, to a method for feeding back a precoding matrix indicator, a receive end and a transmit end.

BACKGROUND



[0002] A multiple input multiple output (Multiple Input Multiple Output, MIMO) wireless communications system may obtain diversity and array gains by using a transmit precoding technology and a receive signal combination technology. A system using precoding may be indicated as

where y is a vector of a received signal, H is a channel matrix, is a precoding matrix, s is a vector of a transmitted symbol, and n is a measured noise.

[0003] Optimal precoding generally requires that a transmitter completely knows channel state information (Channel State Information, CSI). A frequently used method is that user equipment (User Equipment, UE) quantizes instantaneous CSI and reports the quantized instantaneous CSI to a base station, where the user equipment includes a mobile station (Mobile Station, MS), a relay (Relay), a mobile telephone (Mobile Telephone), a handset (handset), portable equipment (portable equipment) and the like, and the base station includes a node B (NodeB) base station (Base station, BS), an access point (Access Point), a transmission point (Transmission Point, TP), an evolved node B (Evolved Node B, eNB), a relay (Relay) or the like. CSI information reported by an existing Long Term Evolution (Long Term Evolution, LTE) system includes information about a rank indicator (Rank Indicator, RI), information about a precoding matrix indicator (Precoding Matrix Indicator, PMI), information about a channel quality indicator (Channel Quality Indicator, CQI), and the like, where the RI and the PMI respectively indicate a quantity of transmission layers and a precoding matrix that are used. A set of precoding matrices in use is generally referred to as a codebook, and each of the precoding matrices is a codeword in the codebook.

[0004] Codebook design used in existing LTE systems is all based on inter-antenna strong related features. However, as a spacing between two antennas in the same polarization direction increases, an inter-antenna correlation gradually decreases, while phase differences between antenna elements involved in a codebook based on inter-antenna strong related features all keep consistent. Therefore, when the existing codebook design is applied to a scenario in which a large spacing is configured between antennas, good matching cannot be achieved, which results in that the precision at which a base station performs precoding according to PMI information fed back by UE is reduced, thereby causing a large performance loss, and reducing the system throughput.

[0005] Lu Wu et al: Codebook Design for LTE-A Downlink System, Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Fall), 2011 IEEE, 5-8 Sept 2011 describes that multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has been adopted by long term evolution (LTE) and its updated version LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) to increase the spectrum efficiency. However, the benefits of multi-user (MU) MIMO highly rely on the accurate channel knowledge at the transmitter. So proper codebook design is a key problem for LTE-A FDD downlink system. In this paper, a codebook design with phase adjustment in the precoder targeting wideband channel properties is proposed.

[0006] WO2012015252 describes a method whereby a sending station transmits a precoded signal on a wireless communication system that supports multiple-antenna transmission comprises the steps of: determining a first matrix from a first codebook containing precoding matrices in which a first precoding matrix indicator is indicated, determining a second matrix from a second codebook containing precoding matrices in which a second PMI is indicated, and determining a precoding matrix based on the first matrix and the second matrix; carrying out precoding by using the precoding matrix so determined in at least one layer where the signal to be transmitted is mapped; and transmitting the precoded signal to a receiving station. The precoding matrices contained in the first codebook may respectively be constituted from a block diagonal matrix, and the blocks of the block diagonal matrix may be constituted independently from each other, while the precoding matrices contained in the second codebook may respectively be constituted from an ancestor element and a child element, and the child element may comprise a phase rotation value.

[0007] EP2485408 obtaining a precoding matrix indicator, and relates to the field of communication technologies. The method includes: obtaining a first rotation matrix according to first channel information; obtaining a first differential matrix according to the first rotation matrix and a currently-obtained instantaneous beam forming matrix/precoding matrix; and quantizing, according to a first differential codebook, a pre-acquired first rank indicator, and preset quantization criteria, the first differential matrix to obtain a differential precoding matrix indicator. The apparatus includes: a first rotation matrix obtaining module, a first differential matrix obtaining module, and a differential precoding matrix indicator obtaining module.

SUMMARY



[0008] Embodiments of the present invention provide a method for feeding back a precoding matrix indicator, a receive end and a transmit end, which can improve the precoding precision, thereby reducing the performance loss, and improving the system throughput.

[0009] In accordance with the present invention there is provided a method as defined in appended claim 1. A receiving device is further provided according to claim 3.

[0010] Based on the foregoing solutions, user equipment selects a precoding matrix W from a codebook based on a reference signal, where

and θ1 and θ2 are used to respectively indicate a phase difference between two neighboring antennas in a first antenna group and a phase difference between two neighboring antennas in a second antenna group. In this way, an appropriate precoding matrix may be selected according to an antenna spacing condition, to ensure a weak correlation between antennas, and therefore, a base station performs precoding based on the precoding matrix fed back by the user equipment and selected from a codebook structure of the present invention, to effectively improve the precoding precision, thereby reducing the performance loss, and improving the system throughput.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS



[0011] To describe the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention more clearly, the following briefly introduces the accompanying drawings required for describing the embodiments of the present invention. Apparently, the accompanying drawings in the following description show merely some embodiments of the present invention, and a person of ordinary skill in the art may still derive other drawings from these accompanying drawings without creative efforts.

FIG. 1 is a flowchart of a method for feeding back a precoding matrix indicator according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a method for receiving a precoding matrix indicator according to another embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a structural block diagram of a receive end according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a structural block diagram of a transmit end according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a device according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a structural block diagram of a receive end according to another embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 7 is a structural block diagram of a transmit end according to another embodiment of the present invention.


DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS



[0012] The following clearly and completely describes the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention with reference to the accompanying drawings in the embodiments of the present invention. Apparently, the described embodiments are a part rather than all of the embodiments of the present invention. All other embodiments obtained by a person of ordinary skill in the art based on the embodiments of the present invention without creative efforts shall fall within the protection scope of the present invention.

[0013] It should be understood that the technical solutions of the present invention may be applied to various communications systems, such as: a Global System for Mobile Communications (Global System of Mobile communication, GSM), a Code Division Multiple Access (Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA) system, a Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access Wireless, WCDMA) system, a general packet radio service (General Packet Radio Service, GPRS), a Long Term Evolution (Long Term Evolution, LTE) system, a Long Term Evolution Advanced (Advanced long term evolution, LTE-A) system, and a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System, UMTS).

[0014] It should further be understood that in the embodiments of the present invention, user equipment (User Equipment, UE) includes but is not limited to a mobile station (Mobile Station, MS), a relay (Relay), a mobile terminal (Mobile Terminal), a mobile telephone (Mobile Telephone), a handset (handset), a portable equipment (portable equipment), and the like. The user equipment may communicate with one or more core networks by using a radio access network (Radio Access Network, RAN). For example, the user equipment may be a mobile telephone (or referred to as a "cellular" telephone), or a computer having a communication function; the user equipment may further be a portable, pocket-sized, handheld, computer built-in, or in-vehicle mobile apparatus.

[0015] In the embodiments of the present invention, a base station may be a base station (Base Transceiver Station, BTS) in GSM or CDMA, may also be a base station (NodeB, NB) in WCDMA, and may further be an evolved NodeB (Evolved Node B, eNB, or e-NodeB) in LTE, or a relay, which is not limited in the present invention.

[0016] FIG. 1 is a flowchart of a method for feeding back a precoding matrix indicator according to an embodiment of the present invention. The method is executed by a receive end.

101: A receive end selects a precoding matrix W from a codebook based on a reference signal, where the

a matrix X1 is determined according to θ1, a matrix X2 is determined according to θ2 and ϕn, θ1 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a first antenna group of a transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a same transmission layer, θ2 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a second antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for the same transmission layer, ϕn indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group is for a same transmission layer,

M is a positive integer, n is a non-negative integer less than the M, θ1 and θ2 of at least one precoding matrix in the codebook are different, and the first antenna group and the second antenna group belong to a same multi-antenna system.

102: The receive end sends a precoding matrix indicator PMI to the transmit end, so that the transmit end obtains the precoding matrix W according to the PMI.



[0017] The multi-antenna system refers to a system in which the transmit end (such as a base station) and the receive end (such as UE) perform communication by using multiple antennas. Compared with a single-antenna system, multiple antennas of the transmit end and the receive end can form a spatial diversity gain or multiplexing gain, which can effectively improve the transmission reliability and the system capacity. The diversity gain and the multiplexing gain of the multi-antenna system may generally be obtained by using a precoding method of the transmit end and a receive signal combination algorithm of the receive end. For example, in an LTE system, a transmit end uses four antennas, and a receive end uses two antennas.

[0018] Additionally, the multi-antenna system of this embodiment of the present invention is also applicable to a scenario of multi-point joint transmission, and the multi-point joint transmission refers to that multiple transmit ends perform joint signal transmission for a same user, for example, a transmit end A has two antennas, a transmit end B also has two antennas, and the two transmit ends perform joint transmission for a receive end at the same time. Then, a signal received by the receive end may be considered as a signal sent by a 4-antenna base station.

[0019] Based on the foregoing solution, the receive end selects the precoding matrix W from the codebook based on the reference signal, where

and θ1 and θ2 respectively indicate the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group are for the same transmission layer. In this way, an appropriate precoding matrix may be selected according to an antenna spacing condition, to ensure a weak correlation between antennas, and therefore, the transmit end performs precoding based on the precoding matrix fed back by the receive end and selected from a codebook structure of the present invention, to effectively improve the precoding precision, thereby reducing the performance loss, and improving the system throughput.

[0020] For ease of description, in the following embodiments, description is made by using an example in which a transmit end is a base station, description is made by using an example in which a receive end is UE, and it should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention, the receive end may be a base station, and the transmit end may be UE.

[0021] It should be noted that a type of the reference signal in 101 is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention. For example, the reference signal may be a channel state information reference signal (Channel State Information Reference Signal, CSI RS), a demodulation reference signal (Demodulation RS, DM RS) or a cell-specific reference signal (Cell-specific RS, CRS), and CSI may further include a channel quality indicator (channel Quality Indicator/Index, CQI for short). It should be further noted that the UE may obtain a resource configuration of the reference signal by receiving notification (such as radio resource control (Radio Resource Control, RRC) signaling or downlink control information (Downlink Control Information, DCI)) of the base station or based on a cell identity ID and obtain the reference signal in a corresponding resource or subframe.

[0022] Optionally, in step 101, the receive end may obtain a channel estimation value based on the reference signal, and calculate a channel capacity or throughput or chordal distance based on the channel estimation value, and select the precoding matrix from the codebook according to a criterion pre-defined by the receive end, such as a channel capacity or throughput maximization criterion or a chordal distance minimization criterion.

[0023] Further, the receive end may further determine a rank indicator RI based on the reference signal, where the rank indicator RI is corresponding to a quantity of useful transmission layers. For example, the UE may obtain the RI based on a quantity of ports of the reference signal and a unique value of an allowable RI corresponding to a codebook subset limitation; or the UE obtains a channel estimation value based on the reference signal, and calculates a measurement value such as a channel capacity or a throughput based on the channel estimation value, a value for each allowable rank indicator RI, and a corresponding precoding matrix; and selects a rank indicator RI enabling the measurement value to be optimal to serve as a determined rank indicator RI. In step 101, the receive end may select the precoding matrix W corresponding to the rank indicator from the codebook based on the reference signal. Specifically, a codebook subset corresponding to the rank indicator may be determined from the codebook, and then the precoding matrix W is selected from the codebook subset; the precoding matrix W may be further determined directly by using the rank indicator.

[0024] Optionally, the codebook subset may be pre-defined, or the receive end reports the codebook to the transmit end, and the transmit end determines the codebook subset and notifies the receive end of the codebook subset; or the receive end determines and reports the codebook subset, for example, the codebook subset limitation may be notified by the base station to the UE by using high-layer signaling, such as RRC signaling. Optionally, in step 102, the UE may send the precoding matrix indicator PMI to the base station by using a physical uplink control channel (Physical Uplink Control Channel, PUCCH) or physical uplink shared channel (Physical Uplink Shared Channel, PUSCH). It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0025] Moreover, the precoding matrix indicator PMI and the rank indicator RI may be sent in a same subframe, and may also be sent in different subframes.

[0026] It should be understood that the matrix X1 may be further determined according to θ1 and other factors (such as an amplitude), that is, X1 is determined according to at least θ1; similarly, the matrix X2 is determined according to at least θ2 and ϕn, and this is not limited in the present invention.

[0027] Optionally, as an embodiment, in step 101, the precoding matrix W and the rank indicator are corresponding to each other, and the rank indicator is corresponding to a quantity of useful transmission layers. When the rank indicator is greater than or equal to 2, θ1 and θ2 may respectively indicate a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group are for any transmission layer of multiple transmission layers.

[0028] Specifically, in a scenario of four antennas, when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix may be:

or when the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix may be:

where α and β are both constants; optionally,

and



[0029] The foregoing example is merely exemplary, and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention, and the codebook in the present invention may further be a codebook whose rank indicator is another value. For ease of description, in the present invention, description is made by using a codebook with a rank indicator of 1 and a codebook with a rank indicator of 2 as an example, and it should be understood that this is not limited in the present invention.

[0030] It should be further understood that the foregoing codebook is indicated in a form of a single-codebook structure, and certainly, may also be indicated in a form of a double-codebook structure, and this is not limited in the present invention.

[0031] Preferably, in this embodiment of the present invention, description is made by using a scenario of four antennas as an example, the four antennas are divided into two antenna groups, and each group includes two antennas. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention, for example, this embodiment of the present invention may be further applied to a scenario of eight antennas.

[0032] Specifically, in the scenario of eight antennas, each antenna group of two antenna groups may include four antennas, where

when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix may be:

or when the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix may be:



[0033] For ease of description, in the following example, description is made by using the scenario of four antennas as an example.

[0034] Optionally, in an implementation manner, that the rank indicator is 1 or 2 is used as an example, where when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix:

or when the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix:

where

Y1 and Y2 are P×1-dimensional column selection vectors independent from each other, N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, m is a non-negative integer less than N, and P is a positive integer less than N. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, m ∈ {0,1,..., N-1}, and P ∈ {0,1,..., N-1}.

[0035] For example, a value of k is 4, that is, N=16, m ∈ {0,1,..., N-1} = {0,1,...,15}, P=4, and each of Y1 and Y2 may be one of the following column vectors:



[0036] That is,



and Y1 and Y2 may be the same or different.

[0037] Assume that



is a first column of the matrix X in the formula (5); assume that



is a second column of the matrix X in the formula (5).

[0038] Optionally, in step 102, the receive end may send a first precoding matrix indicator PMI1 and a second precoding matrix indicator PMI2 to the transmit end, that is, the precoding matrix indicator PMI includes PMI1 and PMI2. Further, PMI1 and PMI2 are sent in a same period of time or different periods of time. PMI1 is used to indicate W1, and PMI2 is used to indicate W21 or W22. In other words, PMI1 and PMI2 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes).

[0039] Optionally, W1 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a subband channel characteristic, or, W1 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a short-term channel characteristic. A digital of a superscript in W2 indicates a value of a rank. Correspondingly, the receive end may send PMI1 to the transmit end at a long time interval, and send PMI2 to the transmit end at a short time interval.

[0040] Certainly, the receive end may directly indicate a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI, for example, a codebook totally has 256 precoding matrices, and when the PMI sent by the receive end is 0, a first precoding matrix of the 256 precoding matrices is indicated to the transmit end; when the PMI sent by the receive end is 1, a second precoding matrix of the 256 precoding matrices is indicated to the transmit end, ..., that is, values 0 to 255 of the PMI are respectively corresponding to corresponding precoding matrices of the 256 precoding matrices. It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0041] Optionally, the receive end may send a precoding matrix indicator PMI to the transmit end by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel. For example, the UE may send a precoding matrix indicator PMI to the base station by using a physical uplink control channel or physical uplink shared channel. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0042] Therefore, a column vector is selected independently from the matrix X separately by using the column selection vectors Y1 and Y2 in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0043] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may be respectively:



where N = 2k, the k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N (for example, N=16, and A=2), M is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), both i2 and i3 are positive integers, i2 and i3 are independent from each other, and └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,...,N-1}, and i1 ∈ {0,1,...,N/A-1}.

[0044] Optionally, in step 102, the receive end may send a third precoding matrix indicator PMI3 and a fourth precoding matrix indicator PMI4 to the transmit end, that is, the precoding matrix indicator PMI includes PMI3 and PMI4. Further, PMI3 and PMI4 are sent in a same period of time or different periods of time. PMI3 is used to indicate i1, and PMI4 is used to indicate i2 and i3. Specifically, PMI4 may be a joint coding value of i2 and i3. The transmit end may determine i2 and i3 by using a value of PMI4 and a correspondence between i2 and i3. For example, the transmit end may preset a correspondence between PMI4 and i2, determine i2 by using the value of PMI4, and then determine i3 according to a relation PMI4 = P·i2 + i3; similarly, the transmit end may preset a correspondence between PMI4 and i3, determine i3 by using the value of PMI4, and then determine i2 according to a relation PMI4 = P·i2 + i3.

[0045] In other words, PMI3 and PMI4 may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. Certainly, the receive end may directly indicate a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0046] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0047] Optionally, the receive end may send a precoding matrix indicator PMI to the transmit end by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0048] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be selected independently according to a current channel characteristic by using i2 and i3 respectively, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0049] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be respectively:



where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N, P is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), i4 is a positive integer less than (PM-1) (for example, P=4, M=4, and i4<15), └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol, and mod is a modulo operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,...,N-1}, and i1 ∈ {0,1,...,N/A-1}.

[0050] Optionally, in step 102, the receive end may send a fifth precoding matrix indicator PMI5 and a sixth precoding matrix indicator PMI6 to the transmit end, that is, the precoding matrix indicator PMI includes PMI5 and PMI2. Further, PMI5 and PMI6 are sent in a same period of time or different periods of time. PMI5 is used to indicate i1, and PMI6 is used to indicate i4. In other words, PMI5 and PMI6 may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. Certainly, the receive end may directly indicate a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0051] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0052] Optionally, the receive end may send a precoding matrix indicator PMI to the transmit end by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0053] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be determined according to a current channel characteristic by using i4, and θ1 and θ2 in the selected precoding matrix may be the same or different, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0054] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be respectively:



where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, m is a non-negative integer less than N, Δθ = 2πt, and an absolute value of t is less than 1, for example, t is 1/8, -1/16, -1/32, 0, 1/32, 1/16 or 1/8.

[0055] In step 101, the receive end may select a precoding matrix W from a codebook according to selection of θ1 and Δθ (such as a current channel characteristic).

[0056] Similarly, in step 102, the receive end may send two precoding matrix indicators to the transmit end, to indicate θ1 and Δθ respectively. Further, the two precoding matrix indicators may also be sent in a same period of time or different periods of time, and in other words, the two precoding matrix indicators may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. Certainly, the receive end may directly indicate a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0057] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0058] Optionally, the receive end may send a precoding matrix indicator PMI to the transmit end by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0059] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, by using a phase offset Δθ between θ1 and θ2, Δθ may be controlled within a limited change range according to a current channel characteristic, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0060] Optionally, in another implementation manner, that the rank indicator is 1 or 2 is used as an example, where when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix:

or,

where

n1,n2,···,nP are all integers, and may be consecutive values or non-consecutive values, Y, Y1' and Y2' are all P×1-dimensional column selection vectors, N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, m1 is a non-negative integer less than N, and P is a positive integer less than N. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, m1 ∈ {0,1,..., N-1}, and P ∈ {0,1,...,N-1}. For example, a value of k is 4, that is, N=16, m1 ∈ {0,1,...,N-1} = {0,1,...,15}, α is a constant, and θ' is a real number.

[0061] Optionally, P=4, and each of Y, Y1' and Y2' may be one of the following column vectors:



[0062] That is,







[0063] Optionally, in step 102, the receive end may send a seventh precoding matrix indicator PMI7 and an eighth precoding matrix indicator PMI8 to the transmit end, that is, the precoding matrix indicator PMI includes PMI7 and PMI8. Further, PMI7 and PMI8 are sent in a same period of time or different periods of time. PMI5 is used to indicate W3, and PMI8 is used to indicate W41. In other words, PMI7 and PMI8 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes).

[0064] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic. Correspondingly, the receive end may send PMI7 to the transmit end at a long time interval, and send PMI8 to the transmit end at a short time interval.

[0065] When the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix:



where

n1,n2,...,nP are all integers, and may be consecutive values or non-consecutive values, Y3 and Y4 are all P×1-dimensional column selection vectors, N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, m1 is a non-negative integer less than N, and P is a positive integer less than N. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, m1 ∈ {0,1,..., N-1}, and P ∈ {0,1,..., N-1}. For example, a value of k is 4, that is, N=16, m1 ∈ {0,1,..., N-1} = {0,1,..., 15}, β is a constant, and θ' is a real number.

[0066] Alternatively, when the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix may further be:



[0067] In the foregoing formula (16), θ1 specifically indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a first transmission layer of two transmission layers, θ2 specifically indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for the first transmission layer of the two transmission layers, θ3 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a second transmission layer of the two transmission layers, and θ4 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for the second transmission layer of the two transmission layers. Moreover, D, Y3, Y4 and ϕn in the foregoing formula (16) enable two columns in any precoding matrix in a codebook set to be orthogonal to each other.

[0068] When the rank is 2, Y3 and Y4 may be the same or different, and this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0069] It should be pointed out that, θ' may be any real number, a value of θ' is not limit in this embodiment of the present invention, for example, the value of θ' may be 0 or an integer multiple of 2π, such as,

θ' may be a positive number and not an integer multiple of 2π, or may further be a negative number and not an integer multiple of 2π. For example,

or

l is a positive integer and not an integer multiple of N.

[0070] Optionally, P=4, and each of Y3 and Y4 may be one of the following column vectors:



[0071] That is,





[0072] Optionally, in step 102, the receive end may send a ninth precoding matrix indicator PMI9 and a tenth precoding matrix indicator PMI10 to the transmit end, that is, the precoding matrix indicator PMI includes PMI9 and PMI10. Further, PMI9 and PMI10 are sent in a same period of time or different periods of time. PMI9 is used to indicate W3, and PMI10 is used to indicate W42. In other words, PMI9 and PMI10 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes).

[0073] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic. Correspondingly, the receive end may send PMI9 to the transmit end at a long time interval, and send PMI10 to the transmit end at a short time interval.

[0074] Certainly, the receive end may directly indicate a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0075] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0076] Optionally, the receive end may send a precoding matrix indicator PMI to the transmit end by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0077] Therefore, θ' is selected in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0078] It should be pointed out that, manners of denoting the foregoing codebook (or precoding matrix) by using other equivalent matrices all fall within the scope of the present invention. For example, the precoding matrix obtained after the precoding matrix W in this embodiment of the present invention is subject to row or column displacement also falls within the scope of the present invention, for example, different antenna serial numbers correspondingly cause row displacement of the precoding matrix.

[0079] FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a precoding method according to another embodiment of the present invention. The method in FIG. 2 is executed by a transmit end, and is corresponding to the method in FIG. 1, and therefore the description repeated in the embodiment in FIG. 1 is properly omitted.

201: A transmit end receives a precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by a receive end.

202: The transmit end determines, according to the precoding matrix indicator PMI, a precoding matrix W that is selected by the receive end from a codebook based on a reference signal, where

a matrix X1 is determined according to θ1, a matrix X2 is determined according to θ2 and ϕn, θ1 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a first antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a same transmission layer, θ2 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a second antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for the same transmission layer, ϕn indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group is for a same transmission layer,

M is a positive integer, n is a non-negative integer less than M, θ1 and θ2 of at least one precoding matrix in the codebook are different, and the first antenna group and the second antenna group belong to a same multi-antenna system.



[0080] Based on the foregoing solution, a transmit end receives a precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by a receive end, and determines, according to the precoding matrix indicator PMI, a precoding matrix W that is selected by the receive end from a codebook based on a reference signal, where

and θ1 and θ2 respectively indicate the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group are for the same transmission layer. In this way, an appropriate precoding matrix may be selected according to an antenna spacing condition, to ensure a weak correlation between antennas, and therefore, the transmit end performs precoding based on the precoding matrix fed back by the receive end and selected from a codebook structure of the present invention, to effectively improve the precoding precision, thereby reducing the performance loss, and improving the system throughput.

[0081] Optionally, the reference signal in step 202 may be a CSI RS, a DM RS or a CRS, and the CSI may further include a channel quality indicator CQI. It should be further noted that the UE may obtain a resource configuration of the reference signal by receiving a notification (such as RRC signaling or DCI) of the base station or based on a cell identity ID and obtain the reference signal in a corresponding resource or subframe.

[0082] Optionally, in step 201, the transmit end may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. For example, the base station may receive, by using a PUCCH or PUSCH, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the UE. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0083] Preferably, this embodiment of the present invention is applied to a scenario of four antennas, the four antennas are divided into two antenna groups, and each group includes two antennas. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention, for example, this embodiments of the present invention may further be applied to a scenario of eight antennas, and for the form of a precoding matrix in the scenario of eight antennas, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again. For ease of description, in the following example, description is made by using the scenario of four antennas as an example.

[0084] It should be understood that the matrix X1 may be further determined according to θ1 and other factors, such as an amplitude, that is, X1 is determined according to at least θ1; similarly, the matrix X2 is determined according to at least θ2 and ϕn, and this is not limited in the present invention.

[0085] Optionally, as an embodiment, a precoding matrix W and a rank indicator are corresponding to each other, the rank indicator is corresponding to a quantity of useful transmission layers, the rank indicator may be determined by the receive end, and for a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again. Specifically, in a scenario of four antennas, a precoding matrix whose rank indicator is 1 may be the foregoing formula (1); or, a precoding matrix with a rank indicator of 2 may be the foregoing formula (2).

[0086] The foregoing example is merely exemplary, and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention, and the codebook in the present invention may further be a codebook whose rank indicator is another value. For ease of description, in the present invention, description is made by using a codebook with a rank indicator of 1 and a codebook with a rank indicator of 2 as an example, and it should be understood that this is not limited in the present invention.

[0087] It should be further understood that the foregoing codebook is indicated in a form of a single-codebook structure, and certainly, may also be indicated in a form of a double-codebook structure, and this is not limited in the present invention.

[0088] Optionally, in an implementation manner, in step 202, that the rank indicator is 1 or 2 is used as an example, and when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix determined by the transmit end may be the foregoing formula (3); or, when the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix determined by the transmit end may be the foregoing formula (4).

[0089] For example, a value of k is 4, that is, N=16, m ∈ {0,1,···, N-1} = {0,1,···,15}, P=4, and each of Y1 and Y2 may be one of the following column vectors:



[0090] That is,



and Y1 and Y2 may be the same or different.

[0091] Assume that



is a first column of the matrix X in the foregoing formula (5); assume that



is a second column of the matrix X in the foregoing formula (5).

[0092] Optionally, in step 201, the transmit end receives a first precoding matrix indicator PMI1 and a second precoding matrix indicator PMI2 sent by the receive end, and the precoding matrix indicator PMI includes PMI1 and PMI2. Further, PMI1 and PMI2 sent by the receive end are received in a same period of time or different periods of time. In other words, PMI1 and PMI2 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes). In step 202, the transmit end determines, according to PMI1, the W1 selected by the receive end from the codebook based on the reference signal, and determines, according to PMI2, W21 or W22 selected by the UE from the codebook, and the transmit end may determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W21, or determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W22.

[0093] Optionally, W1 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a subband channel characteristic, and a digital of a superscript in W2 indicates a value of a rank; or W1 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a short-term channel characteristic. Correspondingly, the transmit end may receive, at a long time interval, PMI1 sent by the receive end, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI2 sent by the receive end.

[0094] Certainly, the transmit end may directly determine a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end. For example, a codebook totally has 256 precoding matrices, and when the PMI sent by the receive end and received by the transmit end is 0, the transmit end determines that what is selected by the receive end is a first precoding matrix of the 256 precoding matrices of the codebook, and when the PMI sent by the receive end and received by the transmit end is 1, the transmit end determines that what is selected by the receive end is a second precoding matrix of the 256 precoding matrices of the codebook, ..., that is, values 0 to 255 of the PMI are respectively corresponding to corresponding precoding matrices of the 256 precoding matrices. It should be understood that a manner in which the UE indicates a precoding matrix is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0095] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0096] Optionally, the transmit end may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0097] Therefore, a column vector is selected independently from the matrix X separately by using the column selection vectors Y1 and Y2 in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0098] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may be

and

respectively, where N = 2k, the k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N (for example, N=16, and A=2), M is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), both i2 and i3 are positive integers, i2 and i3 are independent from each other, and └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,···, N-1}, and i1 ∈ {0,1,···, N/A-1}.

[0099] Optionally, in step 201, the transmit end receives a third precoding matrix indicator PMI3 and a fourth precoding matrix indicator PMI4 sent by the receive end. Further, PMI3 and PMI4 sent by the receive end are received in a same period of time or different periods of time. In step 202, the transmit end determines i1 according to PMI3, and determines i2 and i3 according to PMI4. Specifically, PMI4 may be a joint coding value of i2 and i3. The transmit end may determine i2 and i3 by using a value of PMI4 and a correspondence between i2 and i3. For example, the transmit end may preset a correspondence between PMI4 and i2, determine i2 by using the value of PMI4, and then determine i3 according to a relation PMI4 = P·i2 + i3; similarly, the transmit end may preset a correspondence between PMI4 and i3, determine i3 by using the value of PMI4, and then determine i2 according to a relation PMI4 = P·i2 + i3.

[0100] In other words, PMI3 and PMI4 may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. Certainly, the transmit end may directly determine a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0101] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0102] Optionally, the transmit end may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0103] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be selected independently according to a current channel characteristic by using i2 and i3 respectively, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0104] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and

respectively, where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N, P is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), i4 is a positive integer less than (PM-1) (for example, P=4, M=4, and i4<15), └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol, and mod is a modulo operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,···, N-1}, and i1 ∈ {0,1,···, N/A-1}.

[0105] Optionally, in step 201, the transmit end receives a fifth precoding matrix indicator PMI5 and a sixth precoding matrix indicator PMI6 sent by the receive end. Further, PMI5 and PMI6 sent by the receive end are received in a same period of time or different periods of time. In step 202, i1 is determined according to PMI5, and i4 is determined according to PMI6. In other words, PMI5 and PMI6 may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. Certainly, the transmit end may directly determine a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0106] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0107] Optionally, the transmit end may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0108] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be determined according to a current channel characteristic by using i4, and θ1 and θ2 in the selected precoding matrix may be the same or different, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0109] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and θ2 = θ1θ respectively, where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, m is a non-negative integer less than N, Δθ = 2πt, and an absolute value of t is less than 1, for example, t is 1/8, -1/16, -1/32, 0, 1/32, 1/16 or 1/8.

[0110] Similarly, in step 201, the transmit end may receive two precoding matrix indicators sent by the receive end, and the two precoding matrix indicators indicate θ1 and Δθ respectively. Further, the two precoding matrix indicators sent by the receive end may also be received in a same period of time or different periods of time, and in other words, the two precoding matrix indicators may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. The transmit end may determine the precoding matrix W by using θ1 and Δθ. Certainly, the transmit end may directly determine, by using a PMI sent by the receive end, a precoding matrix W selected by the receive end. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0111] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0112] Optionally, the transmit end may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0113] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, by using a phase offset θ1 between θ2 and Δθ, Δθ may be controlled within a limited change range according to a current channel characteristic, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0114] Optionally, in an implementation manner, in step 202, when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix determined by the transmit end may be the foregoing formula (12) or (13).

[0115] Similarly, in step 201, the transmit end may receive two precoding matrix indicators: a seventh precoding matrix indicator PMI7 and an eighth precoding matrix indicator PMI8 sent by the receive end, and the two precoding matrix indicators indicate PMI7 and PMI8 respectively. Further, the two precoding matrix indicators sent by the receive end may also be received in a same period of time or different periods of time, and in other words, the two precoding matrix indicators may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. In step 202, the transmit end determines, according to PMI7, W3 selected by the receive end from the codebook based on the reference signal, and determines, according to PMI8, W41 selected by the UE from the codebook, and the transmit end may determine the precoding matrix W according to W3 and W41.

[0116] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic. Correspondingly, the receive end may send PMI7 to the transmit end at a long time interval, and send PMI8 to the transmit end at a short time interval.

[0117] When the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix determined by the transmit end may be the foregoing formula (14) or (16).

[0118] Similarly, in step 201, the transmit end may receive two precoding matrix indicators: a ninth precoding matrix indicator PMI9 and a tenth precoding matrix indicator PMI10 sent by the receive end, and the two precoding matrix indicators indicate PMI9 and PMI10 respectively. Further, the two precoding matrix indicators sent by the receive end may also be received in a same period of time or different periods of time, and in other words, the two precoding matrix indicators may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. In step 202, the transmit end determines, according to PMI9, W3 selected by the receive end from the codebook based on the reference signal, and determines, according to PMI10, W42 selected by the UE from the codebook, and the transmit end may determine the precoding matrix W according to W3 and W42.

[0119] Certainly, the transmit end may directly determine, by using a PMI sent by the receive end, a precoding matrix W selected by the receive end. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0120] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0121] Optionally, the transmit end may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0122] Therefore, θ' is selected in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0123] It should be pointed out that, manners of denoting the foregoing codebook (or precoding matrix) by using other equivalent matrices all fall within the scope of the present invention. For example, the precoding matrix obtained after the precoding matrix W in this embodiment of the present invention is subject to row or column displacement also falls within the scope of the present invention, for example, different antenna serial numbers correspondingly cause row displacement of the precoding matrix.

[0124] FIG. 3 is a structural block diagram of a receive end according to an embodiment of the present invention. The receive end 300 includes a selection unit 301 and a sending unit 302.

[0125] The selection unit 301 is configured to select a precoding matrix W from a codebook based on a reference signal, where the

a matrix X1 is determined according to θ1, a matrix X2 is determined according to θ2 and ϕn, θ1 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a first antenna group of a transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a same transmission layer, θ2 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a second antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for the same transmission layer, ϕn indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group is for a same transmission layer,

M is a positive integer, n is a non-negative integer less than the M, θ1 and θ2 of at least one precoding matrix in the codebook are different, and the first antenna group and the second antenna group belong to a same multi-antenna system.

[0126] The sending unit 302 is configured to send a precoding matrix indicator PMI to the transmit end, so that the transmit end determines, according to the PMI, the precoding matrix W selected by the selection unit 301.

[0127] The multi-antenna system refers to a system in which the transmit end and the receive end perform communication by using multiple antennas. Compared with a single-antenna system, multiple antennas of the transmit end and the receive end can form a spatial diversity gain or multiplexing gain, which can effectively improve the transmission reliability and the system capacity. The diversity gain and the multiplexing gain of the multi-antenna system may generally be obtained by using a precoding method of the transmit end and a receive signal combination algorithm of the receive end. For example, in an LTE system, a transmit end uses four antennas, and a receive end uses two antennas.

[0128] Additionally, the multi-antenna system of this embodiment of the present invention is also applicable to a scenario of multi-point joint transmission, and the multi-point joint transmission refers to that multiple transmit ends perform joint signal transmission for a same user, for example, a transmit end A has two antennas, a transmit end B also has two antennas, and the two transmit ends perform joint transmission for a receive end at the same time. Then, a signal received by the receive end may be considered as a signal sent by a 4-antenna base station.

[0129] Based on the foregoing solution, the receive end selects the precoding matrix W from the codebook based on the reference signal, where

and θ1 and θ2 respectively indicate the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group are for the same transmission layer. In this way, an appropriate precoding matrix may be selected according to an antenna spacing condition, to ensure a weak correlation between antennas, and therefore, the transmit end performs precoding based on the precoding matrix fed back by the receive end and selected from a codebook structure of the present invention, to effectively improve the precoding precision, thereby reducing the performance loss, and improving the system throughput.

[0130] In this embodiment of the present invention, the transmit end may be a base station, and correspondingly, the receive end may be UE; or the transmit end may be UE, and correspondingly, the receive end may be a base station. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0131] The receive end 300 may implement each step of the receive end involved in the method in FIG. 1 to FIG. 2, which is not described in detail again to avoid repetition.

[0132] Optionally, as an embodiment, the receive end 300 may further include a determining unit 303, and the determining unit 303 is configured to determine a rank indicator based on the reference signal, where the rank indicator is corresponding to a quantity of useful transmission layers. The selection unit 301 is specifically configured to select, from the codebook based on the reference signal, a precoding matrix W corresponding to the rank indicator determined by the determining unit 303.

[0133] Specifically, when the rank indicator determined by the determining unit 303 is 1, the precoding matrix selected by the selection unit 301 may be the foregoing formula (1); or, when the rank indicator determined by the determining unit 303 is 2, the precoding matrix selected by the selection unit 301 may be the foregoing formula (2).

[0134] The foregoing example is merely exemplary, and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention, and the codebook in the present invention may further be a codebook whose rank indicator is another value. For ease of description, in the present invention, description is made by using a codebook with a rank indicator of 1 and a codebook with a rank indicator of 2 as an example, and it should be understood that this is not limited in the present invention.

[0135] It should be further understood that the foregoing codebook is indicated in a form of a single-codebook structure, and certainly, may also be indicated in a form of a double-codebook structure, and this is not limited in the present invention.

[0136] Optionally, in an implementation manner, that the rank indicator is 1 or 2 is used as an example, and when the rank indicator determined by the determining unit 303 is 1, the precoding matrix selected by the selection unit 301 may be the foregoing formula (3); or, when the rank indicator determined by the determining unit 303 is 2, the precoding matrix selected by the selection unit 301 may be the foregoing formula (4). For a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0137] Optionally, W1 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a subband channel characteristic, and a digital of a superscript in W2 indicates a value of a rank; or W1 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0138] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sending unit 302 may include a first precoding matrix indicator PMI1 and a second precoding matrix indicator PMI2, PMI1 is used to indicate W1, and PMI2 is used to indicate W21 or W22. Correspondingly, the transmit end may receive, at a long time interval, PMI1 sent by the sending unit 302, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI2 sent by the sending unit 302.

[0139] Therefore, a column vector is selected independently from the matrix X separately by using the column selection vectors Y1 and Y2 in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0140] Optionally, in another implementation manner, when the rank indicator determined by the determining unit 303 is 1, the precoding matrix selected by the selection unit 301 may be the foregoing formula (12) or (13), and for a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0141] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0142] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sending unit 302 may include a seventh precoding matrix indicator PMI7 and an eighth precoding matrix indicator PMI8, PMI7 is used to indicate W3, and PMI8 is used to indicate W41. In other words, PMI7 and PMI8 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes). Correspondingly, the transmit end may receive, at a long time interval, PMI7 sent by the sending unit 302, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI8 sent by the sending unit 302.

[0143] Optionally, in another implementation manner, when the rank indicator determined by the determining unit 303 is 2, the precoding matrix selected by the selection unit 301 may be the foregoing formula (14) or (16), and for a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0144] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0145] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sending unit 302 may include a ninth precoding matrix indicator PMI9 and a tenth precoding matrix indicator PMI10, PMI9 is used to indicate W3, and PMI10 is used to indicate W42. Correspondingly, the transmit end may receive, at a long time interval, PMI9 sent by the sending unit 302, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI10 sent by the sending unit 302.

[0146] Therefore, θ' is selected in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0147] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may be

and

respectively, where N = 2k, the k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N (for example, N=16, and A=2), M is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), both i2 and i3 are positive integers, i2 and i3 are independent from each other, and └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,···, N-1}, and i1 ∈ {0,1,···, N/A-1}.

[0148] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sending unit 302 may include a third precoding matrix indicator PMI3 and a fourth precoding matrix indicator PMI4, PMI3 is used to indicate i1, PMI4 is used to indicate i2 and i3, and specifically, PMI4 may be a joint coding value of i2 and i3. The transmit end may determine i2 and i3 by using a value of PMI4 and a correspondence between i2 and i3. For example, the transmit end may preset a correspondence between PMI4 and i2, determine i2 by using the value of PMI4, and then determine i3 according to a relation PMI4 = P·i2 + i3; similarly, the transmit end may preset a correspondence between PMI4 and i3, determine i3 by using the value of PMI4, and then determine i2 according to a relation PMI4 = P·i2 + i3.

[0149] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0150] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be selected independently according to a current channel characteristic by using i2 and i3 respectively, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0151] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and

respectively, where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N, P is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), i4 is a positive integer less than (PM-1) (for example, P=4, M=4, and i4<15), └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol, and mod is a modulo operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,···, N-1}, and i1 ∈ {0,1,···, N/A-1}.

[0152] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sending unit 302 may include a fifth precoding matrix indicator PMI5 and a sixth precoding matrix indicator PMI6, the PMI5 is used to indicate i1, and PMI6 is used to indicate i4.

[0153] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and θ2 = θ1θ respectively, where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, m is a non-negative integer less than N, Δθ = 2πt, and an absolute value of t is less than 1, for example, t is 1/8, -1/16, -1/32, 0, 1/32, 1/16 or 1/8.

[0154] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, by using a phase offset θ1 between θ2 and Δθ, Δθ may be controlled within a limited change range according to a current channel characteristic, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0155] Optionally, as another embodiment, the selection unit 301 may be further configured to perform row displacement or column displacement on the precoding matrix W according to a serial number of an antenna.

[0156] It should be pointed out that, manners of denoting the foregoing codebook (or precoding matrix) by using other equivalent matrices all fall within the scope of the present invention. For example, the precoding matrix obtained after the precoding matrix W in this embodiment of the present invention is subject to row or column displacement also falls within the scope of the present invention, for example, different antenna serial numbers correspondingly cause row displacement of the precoding matrix.

[0157] Optionally, as another embodiment, the receive end 300 may further include a receiving unit 304, and the receiving unit 304 is configured to receive the reference signal sent by the transmit end. The determining unit 303 is specifically configured to determine a rank indicator based on the reference signal received by the receiving unit 304; or, the selection unit 301 is specifically configured to select the precoding matrix W from the codebook based on the reference signal received by the receiving unit 304. The reference signal includes at least one of the following: a CSI RS, a DM RS and a CRS.

[0158] FIG. 4 is a structural block diagram of a transmit end according to an embodiment of the present invention. The transmit end 400 in FIG. 4 includes a receiving unit 401 and a determining unit 402.

[0159] The receiving unit 401 is configured to receive a precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by a receive end.

[0160] The determining unit 402 is configured to determine, according to the precoding matrix indicator PMI received by the receiving unit 401, a precoding matrix W that is selected by the receive end from a codebook based on a reference signal, where

a matrix X1 is determined according to θ1, a matrix X2 is determined according to θ2 and ϕn, θ1 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a first antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a same transmission layer, θ2 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a second antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for the same transmission layer, ϕn indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group is for a same transmission layer,

M is a positive integer, n is a non-negative integer less than M, θ1 and θ2 of at least one precoding matrix in the codebook are different, and the first antenna group and the second antenna group belong to a same multi-antenna system.

[0161] Based on the foregoing solution, a transmit end receives a precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by a receive end, and determines, according to the precoding matrix indicator PMI, a precoding matrix W that is selected by the receive end from a codebook based on a reference signal, where

and θ1 and θ2 respectively indicate the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group are for the same transmission layer. In this way, an appropriate precoding matrix may be selected according to an antenna spacing condition, to ensure a weak correlation between antennas, and therefore, the transmit end performs precoding based on the precoding matrix fed back by the receive end and selected from a codebook structure of the present invention, to effectively improve the precoding precision, thereby reducing the performance loss, and improving the system throughput.

[0162] The transmit end 400 may implement each step of the transmit end involved in the method in FIG. 1 to FIG. 2, which is not described in detail again to avoid repetition.

[0163] Optionally, as an embodiment, the precoding matrix W and the rank indicator are corresponding to each other, and the rank indicator is corresponding to a quantity of useful transmission layers.

[0164] Specifically, a codebook with a rank indicator of 1 may be the foregoing formula (1); or, a codebook with a rank indicator of 2 may be the foregoing formula (2).

[0165] The codebook in the present invention may further be a codebook whose rank indicator is another value. For ease of description, in the present invention, description is made by using a codebook with a rank indicator of 1 and a codebook with a rank indicator of 2 as an example, and it should be understood that this is not limited in the present invention.

[0166] It should be further understood that the foregoing codebook is indicated in a form of a single-codebook structure, and certainly, may also be indicated in a form of a double-codebook structure, and this is not limited in the present invention.

[0167] Optionally, in an implementation manner, that the rank indicator is 1 or 2 is used as an example, and when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix determined by the determining unit 402 may be the foregoing formula (3); or, when the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix determined by the determining unit 402 may be the foregoing formula (4). For a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0168] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI that the receiving unit 401 may be specifically configured to receive may include a first precoding matrix indicator PMI1 and a second precoding matrix indicator PMI2. Optionally, PMI1 and PMI2 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes). The receiving unit 401 may be specifically configured to receive, at a long time interval, PMI1 sent by the receive end, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI2 sent by the receive end. The determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to determine, according to PMI1, W1 selected by the receive end from the codebook based on the reference signal, and determine, according to PMI2, W21 or W22 selected by the receive end from the codebook. Correspondingly, the determining unit 402 may be further specifically configured to determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W21, or determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W22.

[0169] Optionally, W1 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a subband channel characteristic, and a digital of a superscript in W2 indicates a value of a rank; or W1 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0170] Certainly, the determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to directly determine a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiving unit 401. For example, a codebook totally has 256 precoding matrices, and when the PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiving unit 401 is 0, the determining unit 402 determines that what is selected by the receive end is a first precoding matrix of the 256 precoding matrices of the codebook, and when the PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiving unit 401 is 1, the determining unit 402 determines that what is selected by the receive end is a second precoding matrix of the 256 precoding matrices of the codebook, ..., that is, values 0 to 255 of the PMI are respectively corresponding to corresponding precoding matrices of the 256 precoding matrices. It should be understood that a manner in which the UE indicates a precoding matrix is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0171] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0172] Optionally, the receiving unit 401 of the transmit end 400 may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0173] Therefore, a column vector is selected independently from the matrix X separately by using the column selection vectors Y1 and Y2 in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0174] Optionally, in another implementation manner, when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix determined by the determining unit 402 may be the foregoing formula (12) or (13). For a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0175] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI that the receiving unit 401 may be specifically configured to receive may include a seventh precoding matrix indicator PMI7 and an eighth precoding matrix indicator PMI8. Optionally, PMI7 and PMI8 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes). The receiving unit 401 may be specifically configured to receive, at a long time interval, PMI7 sent by the receive end, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI8 sent by the receive end. The determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to determine, according to PMI7, W1 selected by the receive end from the codebook based on the reference signal, and determine, according to PMI8, W41 selected by the receive end from the codebook. Correspondingly, the determining unit 402 may be further specifically configured to determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W41.

[0176] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0177] Optionally, in another implementation manner, when the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix determined by the determining unit 402 may be the foregoing formula (14) or (16). For a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0178] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI that the receiving unit 401 may be specifically configured to receive may include a ninth precoding matrix indicator PMI9 and a tenth precoding matrix indicator PMI10. The receiving unit 401 may be specifically configured to receive, at a long time interval, PMI9 sent by the receive end, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI10 sent by the receive end. The determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to determine, according to PMI9, W1 selected by the receive end from the codebook based on the reference signal, and determine, according to PMI10, W42 selected by the receive end from the codebook. Correspondingly, the determining unit 402 may be further specifically configured to determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W42.

[0179] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0180] Therefore, θ is selected in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0181] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may be

and

respectively, where N = 2k, the k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N (for example, N=16, and A=2), M is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), both i2 and i3 are positive integers, i2 and i3 are independent from each other, and └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P∈{0,1,···,N-1}, and i1∈{0,1,···,N/A-1}.

[0182] Optionally, the receiving unit 401 may be specifically configured to receive a third precoding matrix indicator PMI3 and a fourth precoding matrix indicator PMI4 sent by the receive end. Further, PMI3 and PMI4 sent by the receive end are received in a same period of time or different periods of time. The determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to determine i1 according to PMI3, and determine i2 and i3 according to PMI4. Specifically, PMI4 may be a joint coding value of i2 and i3, and PMI4 = P·i2 + i3. The determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to determine i2 and i3 by using a value of PMI4 and a correspondence between i2 and i3.

[0183] In other words, PMI3 and PMI4 may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. Certainly, the determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to directly determine the selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiving unit 401. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0184] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0185] Optionally, the receiving unit 401 of the transmit end 400 may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0186] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be selected independently according to a current channel characteristic by using i2 and i3 respectively, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0187] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and

respectively, where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N, P is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), i4 is a positive integer less than (PM-1) (for example, P=4, M=4, and i4<15), └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol, and mod is a modulo operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P∈{0,1,···, N-1} , and i1∈{0,1,···,N / A -1} .

[0188] Optionally, the receiving unit 401 may be specifically configured to receive a fifth precoding matrix indicator PMI5 and a sixth precoding matrix indicator PMI6 sent by the receive end. Further, PMI5 and PMI6 sent by the receive end are received in a same period of time or different periods of time. The determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to determine i1 according to PMI5, and determine i4 according to PMI6. In other words, PMI5 and PMI6 may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. Certainly, the determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to directly determine the selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiving unit 401. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0189] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0190] Optionally, the receiving unit 401 of the transmit end 400 may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0191] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0192] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be determined according to a current channel characteristic by using i4, and θ1 and θ2 in the selected precoding matrix may be the same or different, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0193] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and θ2= θ1θ respectively, where N=2k, k is a non-negative integer, m is a non-negative integer less than N, Δθ = 2πt, and an absolute value of t is less than 1, for example, t is 1/8, -1/16, -1/32, 0, 1/32, 1/16 or 1/8.

[0194] Similarly, the receiving unit 401 may be specifically configured to receive two precoding matrix indicators sent by the receive end, and the two precoding matrix indicators indicate θ1 and Δθ respectively. Further, the two precoding matrix indicators sent by the receive end may also be received in a same period of time or different periods of time, and in other words, the two precoding matrix indicators may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. The determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to determine the precoding matrix W by using θ1 and Δθ. Certainly, the determining unit 402 may be specifically configured to directly determine the selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiving unit 401. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0195] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0196] Optionally, the receiving unit 401 of the transmit end 400 may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0197] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, by using a phase offset θ1 between θ2 and Δθ, Δθ may be controlled within a limited change range according to a current channel characteristic, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0198] Optionally, as another embodiment, the determining unit 402 may be further configured to perform row displacement or column displacement on the precoding matrix W according to a serial number of an antenna.

[0199] It should be pointed out that, manners of denoting the foregoing codebook (or precoding matrix) by using other equivalent matrices all fall within the scope of the present invention. For example, the precoding matrix obtained after the precoding matrix W in this embodiment of the present invention is subject to row or column displacement also falls within the scope of the present invention, for example, different antenna serial numbers correspondingly cause row displacement of the precoding matrix.

[0200] Optionally, as another embodiment, the transmit end 400 may further include a sending unit 403, and the sending unit 403 is configured to send the reference signal to the receive end, so that the receive end selects the precoding matrix W from the codebook based on the reference signal. The reference signal includes at least one of the following: a CSI RS, a DM RS and a CRS.

[0201] This embodiment of the present invention further provides an apparatus embodiment implementing steps and methods in the foregoing method embodiment. FIG. 5 shows an embodiment of a device, and in the embodiment, the device 500 includes a processor 501, a memory 502, a sender 503 and a receiver 504. The processor 501 controls an operation of the device 500, and the processor 501 may be further referred to as a central processing unit (Central Processing Unit, CPU). The memory 502 may include a read-only memory and a random access memory, and provide an instruction and data to the processor 501. A part of the memory 502 may further include a non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM). The processor 501, the memory 502, the sender 503 and the receiver 504 are coupled together by using a bus system 510, where besides including a data bus, the bus system 510 further includes a power supply bus, a control bus and a state signal bus. However, for the sake of clear description, various buses are all marked as the bus system 510 in FIG. 5.

[0202] The foregoing method disclosed in the embodiment of the present invention is applicable to the foregoing device 500. The processor 501 may be an integrated circuit chip, and have a signal processing capability. During implementation, steps of the foregoing method may be implemented by using a hardware integrated logic circuit in the processor 501 or an instruction in a form of software.

[0203] Further, FIG. 6 is a structural block diagram of a receive end according to another embodiment of the present invention. The receive end 600 includes a processor 601 and a sender 602.

[0204] The processor 601 is configured to select a precoding matrix W from a codebook based on a reference signal, where the

a matrix X1 is determined according to θ1, a matrix X2 is determined according to θ2 and ϕn, θ1 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a first antenna group of a transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a same transmission layer, θ2 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a second antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for the same transmission layer, ϕn indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group is for a same transmission layer,

M is a positive integer, n is a non-negative integer less than the M, θ1 and θ2 of at least one precoding matrix in the codebook are different, and the first antenna group and the second antenna group belong to a same multi-antenna system.

[0205] The sender 602 is configured to send a precoding matrix indicator PMI to the transmit end, so that the transmit end determines, according to the PMI, the precoding matrix W selected by the processor 601.

[0206] The multi-antenna system refers to a system in which the transmit end and the receive end perform communication by using multiple antennas. Compared with a single-antenna system, multiple antennas of the transmit end and the receive end can form a spatial diversity gain or multiplexing gain, which can effectively improve the transmission reliability and the system capacity. The diversity gain and the multiplexing gain of the multi-antenna system may generally be obtained by using a precoding method of the transmit end and a receive signal combination algorithm of the receive end. For example, in an LTE system, a transmit end uses four antennas, and a receive end uses two antennas.

[0207] Additionally, the multi-antenna system of this embodiment of the present invention is also applicable to a scenario of multi-point joint transmission, and the multi-point joint transmission refers to that multiple transmit ends perform joint signal transmission for a same user, for example, a transmit end A has two antennas, a transmit end B also has two antennas, and the two transmit ends perform joint transmission for a receive end at the same time. Then, a signal received by the receive end may be considered as a signal sent by a 4-antenna base station.

[0208] Based on the foregoing solution, the receive end selects the precoding matrix W from the codebook based on the reference signal, where

and θ1 and θ2 respectively indicate the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group are for the same transmission layer. In this way, an appropriate precoding matrix may be selected according to an antenna spacing condition, to ensure a weak correlation between antennas, and therefore, the transmit end performs precoding based on the precoding matrix fed back by the receive end and selected from a codebook structure of the present invention, to effectively improve the precoding precision, thereby reducing the performance loss, and improving the system throughput.

[0209] In this embodiment of the present invention, the transmit end may be a base station, and correspondingly, the receive end may be UE; or the transmit end may be UE, and correspondingly, the receive end may be a base station. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0210] The receive end 600 may implement each step of the receive end involved in the method in FIG. 1 to FIG. 2, which is not described in detail again to avoid repetition.

[0211] Optionally, as an embodiment, the processor 601 may be further configured to determine a rank indicator based on the reference signal, where the rank indicator is corresponding to a quantity of useful transmission layers. The processor 601 is specifically configured to select the precoding matrix W corresponding to the rank indicator from the codebook based on the reference signal.

[0212] Specifically, when the rank indicator determined by the processor 601 is 1, the precoding matrix selected by the processor 601 may be the foregoing formula (1); or, when the rank indicator determined by the processor 601 is 2, the precoding matrix selected by the processor 601 may be the foregoing formula (2).

[0213] The foregoing example is merely exemplary, and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention, and the codebook in the present invention may further be a codebook whose rank indicator is another value. For ease of description, in the present invention, description is made by using a codebook with a rank indicator of 1 and a codebook with a rank indicator of 2 as an example, and it should be understood that this is not limited in the present invention.

[0214] It should be further understood that the foregoing codebook is indicated in a form of a single-codebook structure, and certainly, may also be indicated in a form of a double-codebook structure, and this is not limited in the present invention.

[0215] Optionally, in an implementation manner, that the rank indicator is 1 or 2 is used as an example, and when the rank indicator determined by the processor 601 is 1, the precoding matrix selected by the processor 601 may be the foregoing formula (3); or, when the rank indicator determined by the processor 601 is 2, the precoding matrix selected by the processor 601 may be the foregoing formula (4). For a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0216] Optionally, W1 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a subband channel characteristic, and a digital of a superscript in W2 indicates a value of a rank; or W1 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a short-term channel characteristic. Correspondingly, the transmit end may receive, at a long time interval, PMI1 sent by the receive end, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI2 sent by the receive end.

[0217] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sender 602 may include a first precoding matrix indicator PMI1 and a second precoding matrix indicator PMI2, PMI1 is used to indicate W1, and PMI2 is used to indicate W21 or W22.

[0218] Therefore, a column vector is selected independently from the matrix X separately by using the column selection vectors Y1 and Y2 in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0219] Optionally, in another implementation manner, when the rank indicator determined by the processor 601 is 1, the precoding matrix selected by the processor 601 may be the foregoing formula (12) or (13), and for a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0220] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0221] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sender 602 may include a seventh precoding matrix indicator PMI7 and an eighth precoding matrix indicator PMI8, PMI7 is used to indicate W3, and PMI8 is used to indicate W41. In other words, PMI7 and PMI8 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes). Correspondingly, the transmit end may receive, at a long time interval, PMI7 sent by the sender 602, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI8 sent by the sender 602.

[0222] Optionally, in another implementation manner, when the rank indicator determined by the processor 601 is 2, the precoding matrix selected by the processor 601 may be the foregoing formula (14) or (16), and for a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0223] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0224] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sender 602 may include a ninth precoding matrix indicator PMI9 and a tenth precoding matrix indicator PMI10, PMI9 is used to indicate W3, and PMI10 is used to indicate W42. Correspondingly, the transmit end may receive, at a long time interval, PMI9 sent by the sender 602, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI10 sent by the sender 602.

[0225] Therefore, θ is selected in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0226] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may be

and

θ2 respectively, where N = 2k, the k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N (for example, N=16, and A=2), M is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), both i2 and i3 are positive integers, i2 and i3 are independent from each other, and └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,···,N-1}, and i1 ∈ {0,1,···,N/A-1}.

[0227] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sender 602 may include a third precoding matrix indicator PMI3 and a fourth precoding matrix indicator PMI4, PMI3 is used to indicate i1, PMI4 is used to indicate i2 and i3, and specifically, PMI4 may be a joint coding value of i2 and i3. The transmit end may determine i2 and i3 by using a value of PMI4 and a correspondence between i2 and i3. For example, the transmit end may preset a correspondence between PMI4 and i2, determine i2 by using the value of PMI4, and then determine i3 according to a relation PMI4 =P·i2+i3; similarly, the transmit end may preset a correspondence between PMI4 and i3, determine i3 by using the value of PMI4, and then determine i2 according to a relation PMI4 = P·i2+i3.

[0228] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0229] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be selected independently according to a current channel characteristic by using i2 and i3 respectively, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0230] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and

respectively, where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N, P is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), i4 is a positive integer less than (PM-1) (for example, P=4, M=4, and i4<15), └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol, and mod is a modulo operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,···,N-1}, and i1 ∈ {0,1,···,N/A-1} .

[0231] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the sender 602 may include a fifth precoding matrix indicator PMI5 and a sixth precoding matrix indicator PMI6, the PMI5 is used to indicate i1, and PMI6 is used to indicate i4.

[0232] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and θ2 =θ1θ respectively, where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, m is a non-negative integer less than N, Δθ = 2πt, and an absolute value of t is less than 1, for example, t is 1/8, -1/16, -1/32, 0, 1/32, 1/16 or 1/8.

[0233] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, by using a phase offset θ1 between θ2 and Δθ, Δθ may be controlled within a limited change range according to a current channel characteristic, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0234] Optionally, as another embodiment, the processor 601 may be further configured to perform row displacement or column displacement on the precoding matrix W according to a serial number of an antenna.

[0235] It should be pointed out that, manners of denoting the foregoing codebook (or precoding matrix) by using other equivalent matrices all fall within the scope of the present invention. For example, the precoding matrix obtained after the precoding matrix W in this embodiment of the present invention is subject to row or column displacement also falls within the scope of the present invention, for example, different antenna serial numbers correspondingly cause row displacement of the precoding matrix.

[0236] Optionally, as another embodiment, the receive end 600 may further include a receiver 603, and the receiver 603 is configured to receive the reference signal sent by the transmit end. The processor 602 is specifically configured to determine a rank indicator based on the reference signal received by the receiver 603; or, the processor 602 is specifically configured to select the precoding matrix W from the codebook based on the reference signal received by the receiver 304. The reference signal includes at least one of the following: a CSI RS, a DM RS and a CRS.

[0237] FIG. 7 is a structural block diagram of a transmit end according to another embodiment of the present invention. The transmit end 700 in FIG. 7 includes a receiver 701 and a processor 702.

[0238] The receiver 701 is configured to receive a precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by a receive end.

[0239] The processor 702 is configured to determine, according to the precoding matrix indicator PMI received by the receiver 701, a precoding matrix W that is selected by the receive end from a codebook based on a reference signal, where

a matrix X1 is determined according to θ1, a matrix X2 is determined according to θ2 and ϕn, θ1 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a first antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a same transmission layer, θ2 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a second antenna group of the transmit end, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for the same transmission layer, ϕn indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group is for a same transmission layer,

M is a positive integer, n is a non-negative integer less than M, θ1 and θ2 of at least one precoding matrix in the codebook are different, and the first antenna group and the second antenna group belong to a same multi-antenna system.

[0240] Based on the foregoing solution, a transmit end receives a precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by a receive end, and determines, according to the precoding matrix indicator PMI, a precoding matrix W that is selected by the receive end from a codebook based on a reference signal, where

and θ1 and θ2 respectively indicate the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the phase difference of the weighted values for the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group, where the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group and the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group are for the same transmission layer. In this way, an appropriate precoding matrix may be selected according to an antenna spacing condition, to ensure a weak correlation between antennas, and therefore, the transmit end performs precoding based on the precoding matrix fed back by the receive end and selected from a codebook structure of the present invention, to effectively improve the precoding precision, thereby reducing the performance loss, and improving the system throughput.

[0241] The transmit end 700 may implement each step of the transmit end involved in the method in FIG. 1 to FIG. 2, which is not described in detail again to avoid repetition.

[0242] Optionally, as an embodiment, the precoding matrix W and the rank indicator are corresponding to each other, and the rank indicator is corresponding to a quantity of useful transmission layers.

[0243] Specifically, a codebook with a rank indicator of 1 may be the foregoing formula (1); or, a codebook with a rank indicator of 2 may be the foregoing formula (2).

[0244] The codebook in the present invention may further be a codebook whose rank indicator is another value. For ease of description, in the present invention, description is made by using a codebook with a rank indicator of 1 and a codebook with a rank indicator of 2 as an example, and it should be understood that this is not limited in the present invention.

[0245] It should be further understood that the foregoing codebook is indicated in a form of a single-codebook structure, and certainly, may also be indicated in a form of a double-codebook structure, and this is not limited in the present invention.

[0246] Optionally, in an implementation manner, that the rank indicator is 1 or 2 is used as an example, and when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix determined by the processor 702 may be the foregoing formula (3); or, when the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix determined by the processor 702 may be the foregoing formula (4). For a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0247] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI that the receiver 701 may be specifically configured to receive may include a first precoding matrix indicator PMI1 and a second precoding matrix indicator PMI2. Optionally, PMI1 and PMI2 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes). The receiver 701 may be specifically configured to receive, at a long time interval, PMI1 sent by the receive end, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI2 sent by the receive end. The processor 702 may be specifically configured to determine, according to PMI1, W1 selected by the receive end from the codebook based on the reference signal, and determine, according to PMI2, W21 or W22 selected by the receive end from the codebook. Correspondingly, the processor 702 may be further specifically configured to determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W21, or determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W22.

[0248] Optionally, W1 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a subband channel characteristic, and a digital of a superscript in W2 indicates a value of a rank; or W1 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and both W21 and W22 are matrices indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0249] Certainly, the processor 702 may be specifically configured to directly determine a selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiver 701. For example, a codebook totally has 256 precoding matrices, and when the PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiver 701 is 0, the processor 702 determines that what is selected by the receive end is a first precoding matrix of the 256 precoding matrices of the codebook, and when the PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiver 701 is 1, the processor 702 determines that what is selected by the receive end is a second precoding matrix of the 256 precoding matrices of the codebook, ..., that is, values 0 to 255 of the PMI are respectively corresponding to corresponding precoding matrices of the 256 precoding matrices. It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the UE is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0250] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0251] Optionally, the receiver 701 of the transmit end 700 may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0252] Therefore, a column vector is selected independently from the matrix X separately by using the column selection vectors Y1 and Y2 in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0253] Optionally, in another implementation manner, when the rank indicator is 1, the precoding matrix determined by the processor 702 may be the foregoing formula (12) or (13). For a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0254] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI that the receiver 701 may be specifically configured to receive may include a seventh precoding matrix indicator PMI7 and an eighth precoding matrix indicator PMI8. Optionally, PMI7 and PMI8 may have a same time-domain or frequency-domain granularity or different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities (or be based on different subframe periods or subband sizes). The receiver 701 may be specifically configured to receive, at a long time interval, PMI7 sent by the receive end, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI8 sent by the receive end. The processor 702 may be specifically configured to determine, according to PMI7, W1 selected by the receive end from the codebook based on the reference signal, and determine, according to PMI8, W41 selected by the receive end from the codebook. Correspondingly, the processor 702 may be further specifically configured to determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W41.

[0255] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W41 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0256] Optionally, in another implementation manner, when the rank indicator is 2, the precoding matrix determined by the processor 702 may be the foregoing formula (14) or (16). For a specific example, reference may be made to the foregoing description, and details are not described herein again.

[0257] Optionally, the precoding matrix indicator PMI that the receiver 701 may be specifically configured to receive may include a ninth precoding matrix indicator PMI9 and a tenth precoding matrix indicator PMI10. The receiver 701 may be specifically configured to receive, at a long time interval, PMI9 sent by the receive end, and receive, at a short time interval, PMI10 sent by the receive end. The processor 702 may be specifically configured to determine, according to PMI9, W1 selected by the receive end from the codebook based on the reference signal, and determine, according to PMI10, W42 selected by the receive end from the codebook. Correspondingly, the processor 702 may be further specifically configured to determine the precoding matrix W according to W1 and W42.

[0258] Optionally, W3 is a matrix indicating a broadband channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a subband channel characteristic, or W3 is a matrix indicating a long-term channel characteristic, and W42 is a matrix indicating a short-term channel characteristic.

[0259] Therefore, θ is selected in this embodiment of the present invention, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0260] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may be

and

respectively, where N = 2k, the k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N (for example, N=16, and A=2), M is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), both i2 and i3 are positive integers, i2 and i3 are independent from each other, and └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,···,N-1}, and i1 ∈ {0,1,···,N/A-1}.

[0261] Optionally, the receiver 701 may be specifically configured to receive a third precoding matrix indicator PMI3 and a fourth precoding matrix indicator PMI4 sent by the receive end. Further, PMI3 and PMI4 sent by the receive end are received in a same period of time or different periods of time. The processor 702 may be specifically configured to determine i1 according to PMI3, and determine i2 and i3 according to PMI4. Specifically, PMI4 may be a joint coding value of i2 and i3, and PMI4 = P·i2+ i3. The processor 702 may be specifically configured to determine i2 and i3 by using a value of PMI4 and a correspondence between i2 and i3.

[0262] In other words, PMI3 and PMI4 may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. Certainly, the processor 702 may be specifically configured to directly determine the selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiver 701. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0263] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0264] Optionally, the receiver 701 of the transmit end 700 may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0265] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be selected independently according to a current channel characteristic by using i2 and i3 respectively, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0266] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and

respectively, where N = 2k, k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by N, P is a positive integer less than N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), i4 is a positive integer less than (PM-1) (for example, P=4, M=4, and i4<15), └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol, and mod is a modulo operation symbol. That is, N is 2 raised to the power, and may be a value of 0, 2, 4, 8, ..., and the like, P ∈ {0,1,···,N-1} , and i1 ∈ {0,1,···, N/A-1}.

[0267] Optionally, the receiver 701 may be specifically configured to receive a fifth precoding matrix indicator PMI5 and a sixth precoding matrix indicator PMI6 sent by the receive end. Further, PMI5 and PMI6 sent by the receive end are received in a same period of time or different periods of time. The processor 702 may be specifically configured to determine i1 according to PMI5, and determine i4 according to PMI6. In other words, PMI5 and PMI6 may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. Certainly, the processor 702 may be specifically configured to directly determine the selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiver 701. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0268] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0269] Optionally, the receiver 701 of the transmit end 700 may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0270] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0271] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, θ1 and θ2 may be determined according to a current channel characteristic by using i4, and θ1 and θ2 in the selected precoding matrix may be the same or different, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0272] Optionally, in another implementation manner, values of θ1 and θ2 may also be

and θ2= θ1θ respectively, where N=2k, k is a non-negative integer, m is a non-negative integer less than N, Δθ = 2πt, and an absolute value of t is less than 1, for example, t is 1/8, -1/16, -1/32, 0, 1/32, 1/16 or 1/8.

[0273] Similarly, the receiver 701 may be specifically configured to receive two precoding matrix indicators sent by the receive end, and the two precoding matrix indicators indicate θ1 and Δθ respectively. Further, the two precoding matrix indicators sent by the receive end may also be received in a same period of time or different periods of time, and in other words, the two precoding matrix indicators may have different time-domain or frequency-domain granularities. The processor 702 may be specifically configured to determine the precoding matrix W by using θ1 and Δθ. Certainly, the processor 702 may be specifically configured to directly determine the selected precoding matrix W by using a PMI sent by the receive end and received by the receiver 701. For a specific implementation manner, reference may be made to the foregoing embodiment, and details are not described herein again.

[0274] It should be understood that a manner of indicating a precoding matrix by the receive end is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0275] Optionally, the receiver 701 of the transmit end 700 may receive, by using a physical control channel or physical shared channel, the precoding matrix indicator PMI sent by the receive end. It should be understood that this is not limited in this embodiment of the present invention.

[0276] Therefore, in this embodiment of the present invention, by using a phase offset θ1 between θ2 and Δθ, Δθ may be controlled within a limited change range according to a current channel characteristic, thereby ensuring a weak correlation between codebooks corresponding to antennas with a large spacing.

[0277] Optionally, as another embodiment, the processor 702 may be further configured to perform row displacement or column displacement on the precoding matrix W according to a serial number of an antenna.

[0278] It should be pointed out that, manners of denoting the foregoing codebook (or precoding matrix) by using other equivalent matrices all fall within the scope of the present invention. For example, the precoding matrix obtained after the precoding matrix W in this embodiment of the present invention is subject to row or column displacement also falls within the scope of the present invention, for example, different antenna serial numbers correspondingly cause row displacement of the precoding matrix.

[0279] Optionally, as another embodiment, the transmit end 700 may further include a sender 703, and the sender 703 is configured to send the reference signal to the receive end, so that the receive end selects the precoding matrix W from the codebook based on the reference signal. The reference signal includes at least one of the following: a CSI RS, a DM RS and a CRS.

[0280] A person of ordinary skill in the art may be aware that, in combination with the examples described in the embodiments disclosed in this specification, units and algorithm steps may be implemented by electronic hardware or a combination of computer software and electronic hardware. Whether the functions are performed by hardware or software depends on particular applications and design constraint conditions of the technical solutions. A person skilled in the art may use different methods to implement the described functions for each particular application, but it should not be considered that the implementation goes beyond the scope of the present invention.

[0281] It may be clearly understood by a person skilled in the art that, for the purpose of convenient and brief description, for a detailed working process of the foregoing system, apparatus, and unit, reference may be made to a corresponding process in the foregoing method embodiments, and details are not described herein again.

[0282] In the several embodiments provided in the present application, it should be understood that the disclosed system, apparatus, and method may be implemented in other manners. For example, the described apparatus embodiment is merely exemplary. For example, the unit division is merely logical function division and may be other division in actual implementation. For example, a plurality of units or components may be combined or integrated into another system, or some features may be ignored or not performed. In addition, the displayed or discussed mutual couplings or direct couplings or communication connections may be implemented through some interfaces. The indirect couplings or communication connections between the apparatuses or units may be implemented in electronic, mechanical, or other forms.

[0283] The units described as separate parts may or may not be physically separate, and parts displayed as units may or may not be physical units, may be located in one position, or may be distributed on a plurality of network units. A part or all of the units may be selected according to actual needs to achieve the objectives of the solutions of the embodiments.

[0284] In addition, functional units in the embodiments of the present invention may be integrated into one processing unit, or each of the units may exist alone physically, or two or more units are integrated into one unit.

[0285] When the functions are implemented in the form of a software functional unit and sold or used as an independent product, the functions may be stored in a computer-readable storage medium. Based on such an understanding, the technical solutions of the present invention essentially, or the part contributing to the prior art, or a part of the technical solutions may be implemented in a form of a software product. The software product is stored in a storage medium, and includes several instructions for instructing a computer device (which may be a personal computer, a server, or a network device) to perform all or a part of the steps of the methods described in the embodiments of the present invention. The foregoing storage medium includes: any medium that can store program code, such as a USB flash drive, a removable hard disk, a read-only memory (Read-Only Memory, ROM), a random access memory (Random Access Memory, RAM), a magnetic disk, or an optical disc.


Claims

1. A method for feeding back a precoding matrix indicator, comprising:

selecting (101), by a receive end, a precoding matrix W from a codebook based on a reference signal, wherein the

a matrix X1 is determined according to θ1 a matrix X2 is determined according to θ2 and ϕn, the θ1 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a first antenna group of a transmit end, wherein the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a same transmission layer, the θ2 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a second antenna group of the transmit end, wherein the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for a same transmission layer, the ϕn indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group, wherein the signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group is for a same transmission layer, the

the M is a positive integer, the n is a non-negative integer less than the M, θ1 and θ2 of at least one precoding matrix in the codebook are different, and the first antenna group and the second antenna group belong to a same multi-antenna system; and

sending (102), by the receive end, a precoding matrix indicator, PMI, to the transmit end, so that the transmit end determines the W according to the PMI,

characterised in that

the

and the

wherein N=2k, k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by the N, P is a positive integer less than the N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), i4 is a positive integer less than (PM-1), └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol, mod is a modulo operation symbol.


 
2. The method according to claim 1, wherein after the selecting, by a receive end, a precoding
matrix W from a codebook based on a reference signal, the method further comprises:
performing, by the receive end, row displacement or column displacement on the W according to a serial number of an antenna.
 
3. A receive end, comprising:

a selection unit (301), configured to select a precoding matrix W from a codebook based on a reference signal, wherein the

a matrix X1 is determined according to θ1, a matrix X2 is determined according to θ2 and ϕn, the θ1 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a first antenna group of a transmit end, wherein the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the first antenna group is for a same transmission layer, the θ2 indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between two neighboring antennas in a second antenna group of the transmit end, wherein the signal transmission between the two neighboring antennas in the second antenna group is for the same transmission layer, the ϕn indicates a phase difference of weighted values for signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group, wherein the signal transmission between the first antenna group and the second antenna group is for a same transmission layer, the

M is a positive integer, n is a non-negative integer less than M, θ1 and θ2 of at least one precoding matrix in the codebook are different, and the first antenna group and the second antenna group belong to a same multi-antenna system; and

a sending unit (302), configured to send a precoding matrix indicator, PMI, to the transmit end, so that the transmit end determines, according to the PMI, the W selected by the selection unit,

characterised in that the

and the

wherein N=2k, k is a non-negative integer, A is a positive integer that can be divided exactly by the N, P is a positive integer less than the N, i1 is a non-negative integer less than (N/A-1), i4 is a positive integer less than (PM-1), └·┘ is a round-down operation symbol, mod is a modulo operation symbol.


 
4. The receive end according to claim 3, wherein selecting unit is configured to, after selecting a precoding matrix W from a codebook based on a reference signal, perform row displacement or column displacement on the W according to a serial number of an antenna.
 


Ansprüche

1. Verfahren zum Rückmelden eines Vorcodierungsmatrixindikators, umfassend:

Auswählen (101), durch ein Empfangsende, einer Vorcodierungsmatrix W aus einem Codebuch basierend auf einem Referenzsignal, wobei die

eine Matrix X1 gemäß θ1 bestimmt wird, eine Matrix X2 gemäß θ2 und ϕn bestimmt wird, das θ1 eine Phasendifferenz gewichteter Werte für eine Signalübertragung zwischen zwei benachbarten Antennen in einer ersten Antennengruppe eines Sendeendes angibt, wobei die Signalübertragung zwischen den beiden benachbarten Antennen in der ersten Antennengruppe für dieselbe Übertragungsschicht ist, das θ2 eine Phasendifferenz gewichteter Werte für eine Signalübertragung zwischen zwei benachbarten Antennen in einer zweiten Antennengruppe des Sendeendes angibt, wobei die Signalübertragung zwischen den beiden benachbarten Antennen in der zweiten Antennengruppe für dieselbe Übertragungsschicht ist, das ϕn eine Phasendifferenz gewichteter Werte für eine Signalübertragung zwischen der ersten Antennengruppe und der zweiten Antennengruppe angibt, wobei die Signalübertragung zwischen der ersten Antennengruppe und der zweiten Antennengruppe für dieselbe Übertragungsschicht ist, das

das M eine positive ganze Zahl ist, das n eine nicht negative ganze Zahl kleiner als das M ist, sich θ1 und θ2 von mindestens einer Vorcodierungsmatrix im Codebuch unterscheiden und die erste Antennengruppe und die zweite Antennengruppe zu demselben Mehrantennensystem gehören; und

Senden (102), durch das Empfangsende, eines Vorcodierungsmatrixindikators bzw. PMI zu dem Sendeende, sodass das Sendeende die W gemäß dem PMI bestimmt,

dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass

das

und das

wobei N=2k, k eine nicht negative ganze Zahl ist, A eine positive ganze Zahl ist, die exakt durch das N dividiert werden kann, P eine positive ganze Zahl kleiner als das N ist, i1 eine nicht negative ganze Zahl kleiner als (N/A-1) ist, i4 eine positive ganze Zahl kleiner als (PM-1) ist, └·┘ ein Abrunden-Operationssymbol ist, mod ein Modulo-Operationssymbol ist.


 
2. Verfahren nach Anspruch 1, wobei das Verfahren nach dem Auswählen, durch ein Empfangsende, einer Vorcodierungsmatrix W aus einem Codebuch basierend auf einem Referenzsignal ferner Folgendes umfasst:
Durchführen, durch das Empfangsende, einer Zeilenverschiebung oder Spaltenverschiebung an der W gemäß einer Seriennummer einer Antenne.
 
3. Empfangsende, umfassend:

eine Auswahleinheit (301), die ausgelegt ist zum Auswählen einer Vorcodierungsmatrix W aus einem Codebuch basierend auf einem Referenzsignal, wobei die

eine Matrix X1 gemäß θ1 bestimmt wird, eine Matrix X2 gemäß θ2 und ϕn bestimmt wird, das θ1 eine Phasendifferenz gewichteter Werte für eine Signalübertragung zwischen zwei benachbarten Antennen in einer ersten Antennengruppe eines Sendeendes angibt, wobei die Signalübertragung zwischen den beiden benachbarten Antennen in der ersten Antennengruppe für dieselbe Übertragungsschicht ist, das θ2 eine Phasendifferenz gewichteter Werte für eine Signalübertragung zwischen zwei benachbarten Antennen in einer zweiten Antennengruppe des Sendeendes angibt, wobei die Signalübertragung zwischen den beiden benachbarten Antennen in der zweiten Antennengruppe für dieselbe Übertragungsschicht ist, das ϕn eine Phasendifferenz gewichteter Werte für eine Signalübertragung zwischen der ersten Antennengruppe und der zweiten Antennengruppe angibt, wobei die Signalübertragung zwischen der ersten Antennengruppe und der zweiten Antennengruppe für dieselbe Übertragungsschicht ist, das

M eine positive ganze Zahl ist, n eine nicht negative ganze Zahl kleiner als das M ist, sich θ1 und θ2 von mindestens einer Vorcodierungsmatrix im Codebuch unterscheiden und die erste Antennengruppe und die zweite Antennengruppe zu demselben Mehrantennensystem gehören; und

eine Sendeeinheit (302), die ausgelegt ist zum Senden eines Vorcodierungsmatrixindikators bzw. PMI zu dem Sendeende, sodass das Sendeende die durch die Auswahleinheit ausgewählte W gemäß dem PMI bestimmt,

dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass

das

und das

wobei N=2k, k eine nicht negative ganze Zahl ist, A eine positive ganze Zahl ist, die exakt durch das N dividiert werden kann, P eine positive ganze Zahl kleiner als das N ist, i1 eine nicht negative ganze Zahl kleiner als (N/A-1) ist, i4 eine positive ganze Zahl kleiner als (PM-1) ist, └·┘ ein Abrunden-Operationssymbol ist, mod ein Modulo-Operationssymbol ist.


 
4. Empfangsende nach Anspruch 3, wobei die Auswahleinheit nach dem Auswählen einer Vorcodierungsmatrix W aus einem Codebuch basierend auf einem Referenzsignal ausgelegt ist zum Durchführen einer Zeilenverschiebung oder Spaltenverschiebung an der W gemäß einer Seriennummer einer Antenne.
 


Revendications

1. Procédé de rétroaction d'un indicateur de matrice de précodage, comprenant :

la sélection (101), par une extrémité de réception, d'une matrice de précodage W à partir d'un livre de codes sur la base d'un signal de référence,

une matrice X1 étant déterminée en fonction de θ1, une matrice X2 étant déterminée en fonction de θ2 et ϕn, θ1 indiquant une différence de phase de valeurs pondérées pour une transmission de signal entre deux antennes voisines dans un premier groupe d'antennes d'une extrémité de transmission, la transmission de signal entre les deux antennes voisines dans le premier groupe d'antennes étant pour une même couche de transmission, θ2 indiquant une différence de phase de valeurs pondérées pour une transmission de signal entre deux antennes voisines dans un second groupe d'antennes de l'extrémité de transmission, la transmission de signal entre les deux antennes voisines dans le second groupe d'antennes étant pour une même couche de transmission, ϕn indiquant une différence de phase de valeurs pondérées pour une transmission de signal entre le premier groupe d'antennes et le second groupe d'antennes, la transmission de signal entre le premier groupe d'antennes et le second groupe d'antennes étant pour une même couche de transmission,

M étant un nombre entier positif, n étant un nombre entier non négatif inférieur à M, θ1 et θ2 d'au moins une matrice de précodage dans le livre de codes étant différents, et le premier groupe d'antennes et le second groupe d'antennes appartenant à un même système à antennes multiples ; et

l'envoi (102), par l'extrémité de réception, d'un indicateur de matrice de précodage, PMI, à l'extrémité de transmission, de telle sorte que l'extrémité de transmission détermine W en fonction du PMI,

caractérisé en ce que

N = 2k, k étant un nombre entier non négatif, A étant un nombre entier positif qui peut être divisé exactement par N, P étant un nombre entier positif inférieur à N, i1 étant un nombre entier non négatif inférieur à (N/A-1), i4 étant un nombre entier positif inférieur à (PM-1), └·┘ étant un symbole d'opération d'arrondi, mod étant un symbole d'opération modulo.


 
2. Procédé selon la revendication 1, après la sélection, par une extrémité de réception, d'une matrice de précodage W à partir d'un livre de codes sur la base d'un signal de référence, le procédé comprenant en outre :
la réalisation, par l'extrémité de réception, d'un déplacement de rangée ou d'un déplacement de colonne sur W en fonction d'un numéro de série d'une antenne.
 
3. Extrémité de réception comprenant :

une unité de sélection (301) configurée pour sélectionner une matrice de précodage W à partir d'un livre de codes sur la base d'un signal de référence,

une matrice X1 étant déterminée en fonction de θ1, une matrice X2 étant déterminée en fonction de θ2 et ϕn, θ1 indiquant une différence de phase de valeurs pondérées pour une transmission de signal entre deux antennes voisines dans un premier groupe d'antennes d'une extrémité de transmission, la transmission de signal entre les deux antennes voisines dans le premier groupe d'antennes étant pour une même couche de transmission, θ2 indiquant une différence de phase de valeurs pondérées pour une transmission de signal entre deux antennes voisines dans un second groupe d'antennes de l'extrémité de transmission, la transmission de signal entre les deux antennes voisines dans le second groupe d'antennes étant pour la même couche de transmission, ϕn indiquant une différence de phase de valeurs pondérées pour une transmission de signal entre le premier groupe d'antennes et le second groupe d'antennes, la transmission de signal entre le premier groupe d'antennes et le second groupe d'antennes étant pour une même couche de transmission,

M étant un nombre entier positif, n étant un nombre entier non négatif inférieur à M, θ1 et θ2 d'au moins une matrice de précodage dans le livre de codes étant différents, et le premier groupe d'antennes et le second groupe d'antennes appartenant à un même système à antennes multiples ; et

une unité d'envoi (302), configurée pour envoyer un indicateur de matrice de précodage, PMI, à l'extrémité de transmission, de telle sorte que l'extrémité de transmission détermine, en fonction du PMI, W sélectionnée par l'unité de sélection,

caractérisé en ce que

N = 2k, k étant un nombre entier non négatif, A étant un nombre entier positif qui peut être divisé exactement par N, P étant un nombre entier positif inférieur à N, i1 étant un nombre entier non négatif inférieur à (N/A-1), i4 étant un nombre entier positif inférieur à (PM-1), └·┘ étant un symbole d'opération d'arrondi, mod étant un symbole d'opération modulo.


 
4. Extrémité de réception selon la revendication 3, une unité de sélection étant configurée pour, après sélection d'une matrice de précodage W à partir d'un livre de codes sur la base d'un signal de référence, réaliser un déplacement de rangée ou un déplacement de colonne sur W en fonction d'un numéro de série d'une antenne.
 




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