CoMP-CSB for ICI Nulling with User Selection

The capacity of downlink multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cellular networks is significantly limited by inter-cell interference (ICI), particularly at cell boundaries. Recently, two types of coordinated multiple point transmission (CoMP) technologies, joint processing and transmission (JPT) and coordinated scheduling and beamforming (CSB), were proposed. These technologies are intended for the latest cellular communication standard in order to improve the performance of cell-edge users who suffer from significant ICI. In this paper, we propose an ICI cancellation technique based on a user selection algorithm for CoMP-CSB. Under partial channel state information (CSI) and no data sharing condition, each base station (BS) concentrates more on the direction of interference to the adjacent cell´s users, during the user selection process. Unlike prior concepts for a single-cell environment, in which each BS generates a precoding matrix for selected users to be served, the proposed technique considers the effects of interference to users located in adjacent cells. Although there are obvious trade-offs between ICI mitigation and the number of simultaneous scheduled users in terms of system capacity, the simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm achieves higher sector throughput and is more robust against ICI if the system is limited by interference. Furthermore, through simulation we are able to obtain the preferred option for the coordination distance (R) and the number of degrees of freedom for ICI nulling (ξ).