Sum Rate Based Transmission Selection Schemes in Distributed Antenna Systems

In this paper, we study single cell multi-user downlink distributed antenna systems (DAS) where antenna ports are geographically separated in a cell. First, we derive an expression of the ergodic sum rate for the DAS in the presence of pathloss. Then, we propose a transmission selection scheme based on the derived expressions which does not require channel state information at the transmitter. Utilizing the knowledge of distance information from a user to each distributed antenna (DA) port, we consider the optimization of pairings of DA ports and users to maximize the system performance. Based on the ergodic sum rate expressions, the proposed scheme chooses the best mode maximizing the ergodic sum rate among mode candidates. In our proposed scheme, the number of mode candidates are greatly reduced compared to that of ideal mode selection. In addition, we analyze the signal to noise ratio cross-over point for different modes using the sum rate expressions. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we show the accuracy of our derivations for the ergodic sum rate. Moreover, simulation results confirm that the proposed scheme produces the average sum rate identical to the ideal mode selection with significantly reduced candidates.