Transmission mode selection for downlink transmission in LTE-A networks

In this paper, we investigate mode selection for coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission in downlink LTE-A networks, where inter-cluster interference exists. The proposed scheme selects the single-cell (SC) or coordinated beamforming (CB) transmission mode according to interference level to maximize the weighted sum rate with fairness consideration. To formulate the optimization problem, an approximated closed-form expression for the achievable rate is derived by modeling the probability distributions of signal and interference powers as Gamma distributions. Since the original optimization problem is a combinatorial and non-convex one with high complexity, a low-complexity and sub-optimal algorithm is proposed, which first performs coordinated cell selection and then transmission mode selection. Simulation results show that the closed-form approximation of the achievable rate is very tight and the proposed mode selection scheme can improve the average system throughput by 13% and the 10th percentile user throughput by 10% compared with the existing scheme.