Joint clustering and inter-cell resource allocation for CoMP in ultra dense cellular networks

Ultra dense cellular networks (UDNs) are concerned in this paper, which employ Macro-Diversity- Coordinated Multipoint (MD-CoMP) to deal with the serious inter-cell interference. Considering the constraints of inter-cell resource allocation posed by CoMP and the difference of load in each cell, a joint clustering and inter-cell resource allocation is necessary. To achieve a feasible solution, the joint optimization is approximated by two sub-problems, i.e. clustering based on load information using game theory and inter-cell resource allocation based graph-coloring algorithms. Thus a two-step joint clustering and scheduling (TS-JCS) scheme is proposed. Simulation results illustrate that TS-JCS has the capability to jointly consider clustering with the requirements on resources. Compared to No-CoMP and the comparing scheme without consideration of resource allocation, TS-JCS can significantly improve the system performance, demonstrating the necessity and superiority of joint CoMP clustering and inter-cell resource allocation.