Comparative study of various multiuser detection and base-station cooperation schemes for uplink multicell systems

In this contribution, we investigate and compare the spectral-efficiency of uplink multicell systems, when various BS cooperation strategies and detection schemes are employed. Associated with our studies, three base-station (BS) operational schemes are considered, which are the ideal BS cooperation, data exchange only and no BS cooperation, in conjunction with four multiuser detection (MUD) schemes, including the optimum MUD (OMUD), OMUD with parallel interference cancellation (OMUD-PIC), linear minimummean-square error MUD (MMSE-MUD) and the MMSE-based successive interference cancellation (MMSE-SIC). Their spectral-efficiency is evaluated either by simulations for the multicell systems of limited size or based on the formulas derived by asymptotic analysis. In this article, the asymptotic spectral-efficiency (ASE) of multicell systems with various BS cooperation and MUD schemes is derived based on the asymptotic analysis of the channel autocorrelation matrix’s eigenvalue distribution or of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) attained by a concerned scheme. The impacts of system load, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and intercell interference strength on the spectral-efficiency are demonstrated. Our studies and performance results show that, when taking into account of the trade-off between complexity and performance, the MMSE-SIC supported by data exchange among BSs may constitute a promising multicell processing (MCP) scheme that is beneficial for implementation in practical systems.