Transmission Scheduling and Game Theoretical Power Allocation for Interference Coordination in CoMP

In 3GPP LTE-A, Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) is adopted to enhance the transmission rates of edge users. To maximize the total downlink throughput of all edge users, it is crucial to properly determine the set of simultaneously served users in each physical resource block (PRB) and the cooperative base stations (BSs) for each scheduled user, as well as the transmit power of the BSs. Based on the reference signal receiving power (RSRP) of each edge user, we first propose two simple and integrated transmission scheduling algorithms, one distributed and the other centralized, to choose cell-edge users and cooperative BSs in each PRB. With the scheduling results, the classic Water-Filling (WF) algorithm is carried out over all PRBs at each BS to get an initial single cell power allocation. To take the interference among different cooperative BS sets into account, we further formulate a non-cooperative power allocation game to adjust the initial power allocation for interference coordination, where the initial power allocation provides the strategy space of the game for each BS. This increases the total downlink throughput of edge users over all BSs. We prove that the game has a unique Nash Equilibrium (NE), and design an algorithm to find the NE. Performance gain is then demonstrated through extensive simulation studies.