Centralized scheduling for joint transmission coordinated multi-point in LTE-Advanced

Coordinated multi-point transmission/reception is considered for LTE-Advanced as a tool to improve the coverage of high data rates, the cell-edge throughput and/or to increase the system throughput. Joint transmission schemes are mentioned in as an example of coordinated transmission between cells for the downlink. Here, data are transmitted simultaneously either coherently or non-coherently from multiple cells to a single mobile station. In this paper, a centralized MAC scheduling approach for joint transmission coordinated multi-point (JT CoMP) is proposed. Since several base stations transmit jointly to a single mobile station, the base stations are grouped together in so-called clusters. Several cluster strategies are investigated as well. The focus is on schemes that add only low complexity to the existing 3GPP LTE Release 8 system. Simulation results are provided for non-coherent transmission for full buffer and bursty traffic models with various system loads for different static cell clustering approaches.