FIG. 4E is a graph of explicit sounding overhead as a function of modulation and code schema (MCS) used to transmit sounding feedback. FIG. 4E shows representative results for an 8×8 WAP regularly sounding 6 4×4 stations on all tones across an 80 MHz channel. This represent the total airtime needed per sounding. FIG. 4E shows, it is possible to keep the SINR degradation within a desired range through a combination of receiver feedback and frequent channel sounding. The number of soundings required to keep the degradation to within 3 dB is very high however (about 30 in the example shown in FIG. 4D).
In this section, we explore a different approach to keeping the precoding matrix “Q” more closely matched to the actual channel—even if it was originally calculated on a different initial channel. The approach does not consist of sounding and re-calculating the precoding matrix. Instead, we make small incremental changes directly to the precoding matrix, without even having full information about the channel change. Let's denote to composite channel consisting of all individual channels as: