Fair and Energy-Aware Power Allocation Scheme in Multi-Cell MIMO Cooperative Networks

Coordinated Multi-Point transmission (CoMP) and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna systems are two promising concepts to achieve high spectral efficiency and substantially mitigate the interference at the cell border inside one cluster. However, the gains promised by these techniques can severely be degraded in a multi-cluster environment. Therefore, power control plays a crucial role in reducing the inter-cluster interference in cooperative networks. In this paper, we develop a new power allocation scheme for low energy consumption while providing fairness among the users within the same cluster. Our scheme takes into account both the user´s QoS requirement and his channel state information. Simulation results reveal that with this scheme, the total power needed to meet a certain outage probability is reduced by more than 20% and that the fairness index is improved by almost 15%.