A Survey on Beamforming Techniques for Wireless MIMO Relay Networks

One of the major challenges the mobile broadband community faces is the exponential increase in mobile data traffic, even more so, for cell-edge users. Thus, in a multitier network, the demand for high-speed and interference-free transmission and reception is inevitable. Beamforming (BF) is an advanced technology that offers a significantly improved solution to reduce the interference levels and improve the system capacity. Accordingly, the establishment of relays in mobile data networks has emerged spectral efficiency enhancements and cell capacity gains from an overall system perspective. This paper provides a comprehensive survey focused on the performance of adopted beamforming technique on MIMO relay networks that is expected to overcome crucial obstacles in terms of capacity and interference. The main objective is to point out the state-of-the-art research activity on BF techniques in MIMO relay networks, under various network performance challenges. Thereby, it focuses on recently developed procedures for interference modeling and mitigation, BF channel modeling, channel estimation and feedback, complexity and power consumption, adaptive BF for multiuser relaying, degrees of freedom, diversity issues, and spectral efficiency, in cooperative and opportunistic systems. Different network topologies have been considered and categorized, pertaining the challenges of BF implementation in MIMO relay networks.