Robust Multicell Cooperation in MIMO-OFDMA Networks

In future communication systems, the constraint of resource allocation is a challenging topic. The cell edge users in wireless systems experience low Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) due to the high InterCell Interference (ICI) and cannot fully benefit from Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) multi-stream transmission capability. In this project, a practical approach to the multicell cooperation using joint user scheduling and rank coordination is proposed. In this, the cells coordinate among themselves using the transmission ranks (the number of transmitted streams) to maximize a network utility function, i.e., the throughput. Without going for the heavy machinery of an iterative scheduler, we aim for a simpler and practical method that directly tackles user scheduling and rank coordination. The dynamic coordination of the transmission ranks among cells helps cell edge users to benefit from higher rank transmissions. A distributed coordinated scheduler based on master-slave architecture is also studied and significant cell-edge performance gain is obtained using this approach.