Multicell LMMSE Filtering Capacity under Correlated Multiple BS Antennas

Multicell joint processing has been shown to efficiently suppress inter-cell interference, while providing a high capacity gain due to spatial multiplexing across distributed Base Stations (BSs). However, the complexity of the optimal joint decoder in the multicell uplink channel grows exponentially with the number of users, making it prohibitive to implement in practice. In this direction, this paper investigates the uplink capacity performance of multicell joint linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) filtering, followed by single-user decoding. The considered cellular multiple-access channel model assumes both Rayleigh and Rician flat fading, path loss, distributed users and correlated multiple antennas at the base station side. The case of Rayleigh fading is tackled using a free probability approach, while the case of Rician fading is addressed through a deterministic equivalent calculated using non-linear programming techniques. In this context, it is shown that LMMSE can provide high spectral efficiencies in practical macrocellular scenarios.