Optimization of base station coordination and power allocation in cellular networks downlink

Base station (BS) coordination is a promising technique to improve the downlink throughput of cellular systems. However, limitations of both backhaul rate and computation capabilities of BSs pose a limit on the practically achievable downlink throughput. In this paper we propose a technique to select a sub-set of BSs serving each mobile terminal in order to limit the required backhaul information exchange. Moreover, both transmit power at each BS and beamforming are optimized in order to achieve the maximum network throughput. Numerical results show the merits of the proposed approach when compared against existing techniques, lowering the backhaul rate requirement by about 66% for an almost insignificant reduction of the system throughput.