Asymptotic spectral efficiency of multicell MIMO systems with frequency-flat fading

The spectral efficiency of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating in multicell frequency-flat fading environments is studied for situations in which co-channel interference is the dominant channel impairment instead of ambient noise. The following detectors are analyzed: the joint optimum detector, a group linear minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) detector and its generalized version, a group MMSE successive interference cancellation detector, and an adaptive multiuser detector, with the focus on their large-system asymptotic (nonrandom) expressions. Analytical and numerical results based on these asymptotic multicell MIMO spectral efficiencies are explored to gain insights into the behavior of interference-limited multicell MIMO systems.