The value of channel prediction in CoMP systems with large backhaul latency

The quality of channel state information (CSI) has large impact on the performance of coordinated multi-point (CoMP) systems. In this paper we study the impact of channel prediction on the performance of coherent CoMP transmission in time-varying channels with large backhaul latency. We resort to large system analysis to derive an explicit expression of the average user rate of the CoMP system when predicted channels are employed for downlink precoding. By comparing with the Non-CoMP systems, we find that channel prediction brings much higher performance gain to CoMP systems with respect to channel estimation. As a result, a CoMP system can perform well for mobile users even under large backhaul latency, if channel prediction will be used instead of channel estimation. Simulation results are provided to validate our analysis.