Decentralized formation of uplink CoMP clusters based on affinity propagation

Cooperative multi-point (CoMP) systems have been identified as a key technology to combat inter-cell interference (ICI), the major source of performance degradation in 4G cellular networks. Due to practical constraints such as backhaul network limitations, the subset of base stations (BS) that should cooperate within the same CoMP cluster must be carefully selected. In this paper we present a decentralized BS clustering scheme based on affinity propagation that is able to adapt the cluster structure to the dynamic traffic conditions. The proposed algorithm allows a significant reduction in backhaul utilization without sacrificing user throughput and fairness.