Adaptive Bit Partitioning for Multicell Intercell Interference Nulling with Delayed Limited Feedback

Base station cooperation can exploit knowledge of the users' channel state information (CSI) at the transmitters to manage co-channel interference. Users have to feedback CSI of the desired and interfering channels using finite-bandwidth backhaul links. Existing codebook designs for single-cell limited feedback can be used for multicell cooperation by partitioning the available feedback resources between the multiple channels. In this paper, a new feedback-bit allocation strategy is proposed, as a function of the delays in the communication links and received signal strengths in the downlink. Channel temporal correlation is modeled as a function of delay using the Gauss-Markov model. Closed-form expressions for bit partitions are derived to allocate more bits to quantize the stronger channels with smaller delays and fewer bits to weaker channels with larger delays, assuming random vector quantization. Cellular network simulations are used to show that the proposed algorithm yields higher sum-rates than an equal-bit allocation technique.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, July 201

Cooperative Multi-Cell Networks: Impact of Limited-Capacity Backhaul and Inter-Users Links

Cooperative technology is expected to have a great impact on the performance of cellular or, more generally, infrastructure networks. Both multicell processing (cooperation among base stations) and relaying (cooperation at the user level) are currently being investigated. In this presentation, recent results regarding the performance of multicell processing and user cooperation under the assumption of limited-capacity interbase station and inter-user links, respectively, are reviewed. The survey focuses on related results derived for non-fading uplink and downlink channels of simple cellular system models. The analytical treatment, facilitated by these simple setups, enhances the insight into the limitations imposed by limited-capacity constraints on the gains achievable by cooperative techniques

Optimal Channel Training in Uplink Network MIMO Systems

We consider a multi-cell frequency-selective fading uplink channel (network MIMO) from K single-antenna user terminals (UTs) to B cooperative base stations (BSs) with M antennas each. The BSs, assumed to be oblivious of the applied codebooks, forward compressed versions of their observations to a central station (CS) via capacity limited backhaul links. The CS jointly decodes the messages from all UTs. Since the BSs and the CS are assumed to have no prior channel state information (CSI), the channel needs to be estimated during its coherence time. Based on a lower bound of the ergodic mutual information, we determine the optimal fraction of the coherence time used for channel training, taking different path losses between the UTs and the BSs into account. We then study how the optimal training length is impacted by the backhaul capacity. Although our analytical results are based on a large system limit, we show by simulations that they provide very accurate approximations for even small system dimensions.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures. To appear in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

Downlink Noncoherent Cooperation without Transmitter Phase Alignment

Multicell joint processing can mitigate inter-cell interference and thereby increase the spectral efficiency of cellular systems. Most previous work has assumed phase-aligned (coherent) transmissions from different base transceiver stations (BTSs), which is difficult to achieve in practice. In this work, a noncoherent cooperative transmission scheme for the downlink is studied, which does not require phase alignment. The focus is on jointly serving two users in adjacent cells sharing the same resource block. The two BTSs partially share their messages through a backhaul link, and each BTS transmits a superposition of two codewords, one for each receiver. Each receiver decodes its own message, and treats the signals for the other receiver as background noise. With narrowband transmissions the achievable rate region and maximum achievable weighted sum rate are characterized by optimizing the power allocation (and the beamforming vectors in the case of multiple transmit antennas) at each BTS between its two codewords. For a wideband (multicarrier) system, a dual formulation of the optimal power allocation problem across sub-carriers is presented, which can be efficiently solved by numerical methods. Results show that the proposed cooperation scheme can improve the sum rate substantially in the low to moderate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) range.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication