Attaining both coverage and high spectral efficiency with adaptive OFDM downlinks

A downlink radio interface is proposed for cellular packet data systems with wide area coverage and high spectral efficiency. A slotted OFDM radio interface is used, in which time-frequency bins are allocated adaptively to different users within a downlink beam, based on their channel quality. Fading channels generated by vehicular 100 km/h users may be accommodated. Frequency division duplex (FDD) is assumed, which requires channel prediction in the terminals and feedback of that information to a packet scheduler at the base station. To attain both high spectral efficiency and good coverage within sectors/beams, a scheme based on coordinated scheduling between sectors of the same site, and the employment of frequency reuse factor above 1 only in outer parts of the sector, is proposed and evaluated. The resulting sector throughput increases with the number of active users. When terminals have one antenna and channels are Rayleigh fading, it results in a sector payload capacity between 1.2 (one user) and 2.1 bits/s/Hz/sector (for 30 users) in an interference-limited environment.