Reference Signal Design for Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission in LTE-Advanced

We address multi-cell reference signal design in support of coordinated multi-point transmission techniques in LTE-Advanced downlink. We start our discussion from theoretical considerations on MSE-optimum multi-cell reference signal design, giving motivation to orthogonalization of the reference signals between cooperating cells. Furthermore, design aspects such as choice of multiplexing schemes, reference signal density, reuse factor and power boosting factors are also discussed in the context of LTE-Advanced. We conclude by providing extensive simulation results on LTE-Advanced reference signal design, illustrating the impact of various design choices on MSE performance as well as on throughput performance in context of multi-cell coordinated beamforming.