Performance evaluations of coordinated multi-point in heterogenous networks

The energy consumption driven by dramatic growing demand for mobile data rates has attracted extensive attention. It is expected that the next generation cellular communication systems should improve not only spectral efficiency but also energy efficiency. Coordinated multi-point transmission (CoMP) and heterogeneous networks (HetNets) are two techniques for achieving high spectral efficiency and enhancing coverage in wireless cellular networks. Currently, CoMP combined with HetNets is a hot topic which has recently gained great interest in the research community, however, its performance remains to be evaluated. In this paper, firstly, we propose a new power consumption model for a base station which taking backhaul into consideration, then we investigate the performance of CoMP in HetNets in terms of spectral efficiency and energy efficiency respectively. The simulation results indicate that CoMP could improve cell spectral efficiency significantly, meanwhile, it can also benefit energy efficiency moderately.