Enhancing uplink throughput via local base station cooperation

Joint decoding at the base stations of a cellular wireless network enables inter-cell interference mitigation, thus enhancing the system throughput. However, deployment of joint multicell decoding depends critically on the availability of backhaul links connecting the base stations to a central processor. This work studies a scenario in which finite-capacity unidirectional backhaul links exist only between base stations belonging to adjacent cells. Relying on a linear Wyner-type cellular model with no fading, achievable rates are derived for the two scenarios in which the base stations are endowed only with the codebooks of local (in-cell) mobile stations, or also with the codebooks used in adjacent cells. The analysis sheds light on the impact of codebook information, decoding delay and network planning (frequency reuse), on the performance of multicell processing as enabled by local and finite-capacity backhaul links. Analysis in the high-SNR regime and numerical results validate the main conclusions.