Capacity and quality enhancement for ANSI-136 downlink using interference cancellation and beamforming

In this paper, we investigate the capacity and quality gains for the downlink of an ANSI-136 system when handsets equipped with co-channel interference cancellation are deployed together with base stations employing array antennas. We find that the two capacity-enhancing techniques complement each other very well. Cell sectorization and beamforming increase interferer strength disparity which is exploited by an interference cancelling receiver Compared to a 7/21 re-use system with conventional receivers, the capacity can be almost tripled by means of four fixed beams per sector and two-user joint detection receivers for a slowly-varying flat fading environment