Correlation-Based Cooperative User Scheduling in the Uplink of Cellular Systems

In this paper, we consider multi-user scheduling to avoid other cell interference (OCI) in the uplink of cellular systems. The base station (BS) determines a user group that can minimize the interference from other cells by exploiting the spatial correlation matrix of users from adjacent BSs. The proposed scheme is applicable to multi-input multi-output (MIMO) as well as single-input multi-output (SIMO) environments by applying an eigen-beamforming technique, enabling the use of flexible antenna structures at the transmitter. Simulation results show that the proposed multi-cell scheduling significantly increase the ergodic capacity by avoiding the OCI compared to conventional scheduling schemes, particularly in high mobility and highly correlated channel environments.