WLCp2-12: System Level Aspects for Receiver Cooperation versus Hybrid ARQ

Uplink receiver cooperation of base stations is investigated and compared to hybrid ARQ from a system level´s point of view. The cooperation of receivers is performed by a common detection entity, receiving signals from different base stations. We review an iterative joint detector, delivering the applied link level results. These results are used to compare receiver cooperation with conventional hybrid ARQ. Simulation results show remarkable gains for receiver cooperation compared to non-cooperative receivers with hybrid ARQ, in terms of throughput and number of users that can be supported. It even turns out that, due to its better performance, receiver cooperation has a lower resulting additional delay than hybrid ARQ in some SNR-regions. We further derive the necessary capacity on the cooperation links, to make receiver cooperation possible.