A base station for generating multi-user precoders. The base station includes a transceiver configured to receive sounding reference signals (SRSs) from a set of user equipments (UEs), and a processor configured to select, for one or more UEs in the set of UEs, one or more codewords from an uplink codebook based on a correlation between the one or more codewords and the one or more SRSs; determine, using a composite downlink codebook, downlink codewords for the selected uplink codewords, respectively, the composite downlink codebook mapping uplink codewords to downlink codewords based on steering angles derived from the uplink codewords; transmit a set of pre-coded channel state information reference signals (CSI-RSs) to the one or more UEs, wherein the pre-coded CSI-RSs are pre-coded based on the determined downlink codewords; and identify a downlink channel matrix based on CSI feedback from the one or more UEs and the pre-coded CSI-RSs.