Increased fairness in cellular networks through baste station cooperation

The inherent trade-off between maximizing the overall throughput and achieving user fairness in cellular networks is well known. This trade-off does not only affect the choice of scheduling objective, but is also relevant for other system design choices. In this paper we extend the standard sum throughput to a family of metrics placing varying emphasis on fairness. We use the proposed metric both for performance evaluation and as a tool for optimization of user scheduling. We then propose a base station coordination scheme targeted primarily for cell edge users. Specifically we allow two neighboring base stations to serve a single user opportunistically by coherent transmit combining. The proposed strategy shows significant performance gains using ldquofairness-rewardingrdquo metrics.