Asynchronous Interference Mitigation in Cooperative Base Station Systems

Cooperative transmission by base stations (BSs) can significantly improve the spectral efficiency of multiuser, multicell, multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems. We show that contrary to what is often assumed in the literature, the multiuser interference in such systems is fundamentally asynchronous. Intuitively, perfect timing-advance mechanisms can be best only ensure that the desired signal components but not also the interference components are perfectly aligned at their intended mobile stations. We develop an accurate mathematical model for the asynchronicity, and show that it leads to a significant performance degradation of existing designs that ignore the asynchronicity of interference. Using three previously proposed linear precoding design methods for BS cooperation, we develop corresponding algorithms that are better at mitigating the impact of the asynchronicity of the interference. Furthermore, we also address timing-advance inaccuracies (jitter), which are inevitable in a practical system. We show that using jitter-statistics-aware precoders can mitigate the impact of these inaccuracies as well. The insights are critical for the practical implementation of BS cooperation in multiuser MIMO systems, a topic that is typically oversimplified in the literature. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright c ©Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc., 2008 201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139