On the joint design of beamforming and user scheduling in multi-cell MIMO uplink networks

Due to the difficulty of coordination in cellular uplink networks, it is a practical challenge to achieve better throuhgput with a distributed scheduling. Futhermore, multiple antennas at mobile stations (MSs) can be utilized for reducing interference or for improving the desired signal strength. In this paper, we investigate a joint design of beamforming and user scheduling for multi-cell multiple input multiple output (MIMO) uplink networks. In the proposed scheme, each BS with M antennas adopts M random beamforming techniques and each MS with L antennas utilizes a single beamforming vector which minimizes the sum power of generating interferences to home cell as well as other cells. In each cell, then, the BS selects M MSs such that both sufficiently large desired signal power and sufficiently small generating interference are guaranteed. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing distributed schemes in terms of sum-rate in practical environments.