An Algorithm for Distributed Cooperative Precoder Selection in a Cellular Network

The performance in the downlink of a reuse 1 : 1 cellular wireless system is severely degraded due to the interference originating from adjacent cell sites. Even the spectral efficiency gains due to MIMO vanish for cell-edge users who are interference limited. Cooperative MIMO, which involves coordination amongst base stations serving adjacent cell-sites, is a promising technique to address the co-channel interference problem. In this paper, the authors study cooperation in the downlink of an interference channel. The base stations cooperate amongst themselves to arrive separately at precoding strategies which improve the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio of the cell-edge users and hence the throughput.