GENERALIZED REFERENCE SIGNALING SCHEME FOR MULTI-USER, MULTIPLE INPUT, MULTIPLE OUTPUT (MU-MIMO) USING ARBITRARILY PRECODED REFERENCE SIGNALS

A multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) downlink beamforming system (200) is provided to enable transmit beamforming vectors to be efficiently provided to a subset of user equipment devices (201.i), where spatial separation or zero-forcing transmit beamformers (wi) are computed at the base station (210) and used to generate precoded reference signals (216). The precoded reference signals (216) are fed forward to the user equipment devices (201.i) which apply one or more hypothesis tests (207.i, 208.i) to the precoded reference signals to extract the precoding matrix (W), including the specific transmit beamforming vector (WUE) designed for the user equipment, and this extracted information is used to generate receive beamformers (vi).