Scheduling Strategies for Coordinated Multi-Point Systems

Abstract

Alike Multiple Input Multiple Output systems, Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) has recently raised in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution context as a promising solution to improve Signal-to-Noise Ratio levels and, consequently, the system performance compared to conventional cellular networks. CoMP systems decrease the average access distances between Antenna Port (AP) and User Equipment (UE) and, at the same time, they allow for handling coverage, decreasing transmit powers, and/or increasing system capacity. Together with the inherent resource granularity of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access, advanced Radio Resource Management algorithms can be developed for these systems. In this work, we focus on the Resource Allocation subproblem of determining the most suitable set of APs to serve the UEs selected according to certain allocation criteria. Our analyses have shown that increasing the number of APs serving a given UE brings only small performance gains, but may cause a significant increase of complexity and signaling.