Coordinated single-cell vs multi-cell transmission with limited-capacity backhaul

Base station coordination is an efficient technique to transcend the limits on spectral efficiency imposed by intercell interference. In this paper, we compare the performance of different coordination strategies with different amount of channel state information (CSI) and data sharing among the coordinating base stations. We focus on the effect of limited backhaul capacity in a two-cell network. Contrary to the common belief, we show that coordination strategies with no data and only limited CSI sharing is preferred to those with full data and CSI sharing when the backhaul capacity is relatively low and the edge SNR is high.