Cellular vs. Network MIMO: A comparison including the channel state information overhead

Cooperative base-station (BS) signaling using MU-MIMO (Network MIMO) has received a great deal of attention given its ability to reduce inter-cell interference (ICI) and improve the system spectral efficiency. Indeed for a given number of antennas per BS, cooperative systems can have significant benefits over conventional cellular architectures. However cooperative signaling requires and uses more channel state information (CSI). This increases CSI signaling overhead, and can have a non-negligible effect on the system throughput. In fact once systems are compared while taking into account CSI overhead, the question of what system architecture is best becomes interesting and non-trivial. We provide one such alternative look at cooperative architectures. We show, despite prevailing views, that cellular architectures, using coordinated colocated antennas, can be quite attractive compared to Network MIMO.