Embodiments herein describe a radio unit (RU) of a radio access network (RAN), that extracts payload data and beamforming parameters from matrices received from a base station based on format parameters of the matrices and format parameters of channel state information resource signal resource elements (CSI-RS REs). The matrices include a payload matrix and first and second bit mask matrices. Locations of CSI-RS REs are determined based on the bit mask matrices. The payload matrix is separated into CSI-RS RE and non-CSI-RS RE payload matrices based on the locations of the CSI-RS REs. CSI-RS REs and the non-CSI-RS REs beamforming weight matrices are recovered from the bit mask matrices based on known features of the CSI-RS REs and the bit mask matrices. Digital downlink beamforming is performed based on the recovered payload matrices and beamforming weight matrices.