Scheduling and feedback reduction in cellular networks with coordination clusters

Base station coordination has received much attention as a means to reduce the inter-cell interference in cellular networks. However, this interference reducing ability comes at the expense of increased feedback, backhaul load and computational complexity. The degree of coordination is therefore limited in practice. In this paper we explore the trade-off between capacity and feedback load in a cellular network with coordination clusters. Our main interest lies in a scenario with multiple fading users in each cell. The results indicate that a large fraction of the total gain can be achieved by a significant reduction in feedback. We also find an approximate expression for the distribution of the instantaneous signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and propose a new effective scheduling algorithm.