Downlink Scheduling for Users in Cell Boundaries

We consider a problem of optimally scheduling users in cell boundaries, where the users suffer from the interference from neighboring base stations (BSs). We propose new scheduling schemes that mitigate inter-cell interference through a coordination between two BSs to utilize some of the best known achievable schemes for the interference channel (IC) in information theory. In the proposed scheduling, the transmitter opportunistically chooses one of the achievable schemes depending on the instantaneous channel conditions of all users. We consider three scheduling schemes, i.e., full coordination (twoway coordination between two BSs), partial coordination (one-way coordination), and no coordination, and compare their performances. We show the proposed schemes with coordination achieve higher throughput over the conventional scheme without it. Index Terms Interference channel, opportunistic scheduling, multi-user detection