On the impact of signaling delays on the performance of centralized scheduling for joint detection cooperative cellular systems

Cooperative detection involving neighboring base stations is a promising means to increase spectral efficiency in the uplink of cellular systems. To fully utilize the new degrees of freedom that come with base station cooperation, it is essential that a joint scheduler is aware of the interference conditions in all participating cells in order to perform efficient resource and rate allocation. However, joint scheduling can introduce significant delays because it requires the exchange of channel estimates and scheduling grants over a backhaul infrastructure. Due to these delays, channel information that is used for scheduling decisions is potentially outdated. In this contribution, we explore the impact of signaling delays on the performance of joint scheduling for a small cooperative cellular system. We introduce and compare different scheduling approaches inlcuding scheduling metrics that rely solely on statistical channel information and show benefits for high user mobility.