In this paper, we propose a novel low-complexity interference-aware receiver structure for multi-user MIMO that is based on the exploitation of the structure of residual interference. We show that multi-user MIMO can deliver its promised gains in modern wireless systems in spite of the limited channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) only if users resort to intelligent interference-aware detection rather than the conventional single-user detection. As an example, we focus on the long term evolution (LTE) system and look at the two important characteristics of the LTE precoders, i.e., their low resolution and their applying equal gain transmission (EGT). We show that EGT is characterized by full diversity in the single-user MIMO transmission but it loses diversity in the case of multi-user MIMO transmission. Reflecting on these results, we propose a LTE codebook design based on two additional feedback bits of CSIT and show that this new codebook significantly outperforms the currently standardized LTE codebooks for multi-user MIMO transmission.
