User centric scheduling in cooperative networks

Future cellular networks have an increased demand on the capacity to handle. It is well known that intra and inter cell interference is the main challenge to increase the SIRs in cellular networks. Cooperative multi point transmission (CoMP) can avoid inter cell interference, but needs also a big amount of capacity on the backhaul. Partial CoMP (pCoMP) addresses this limitation and reduces the cooperation overhead which makes bigger cooperation areas possible. Simulations indicate gains similar to scenarios using a full user centric assignment. These assignments have normally very low penetration rates, but pCoMP can serve more than 90% of all users. This article explains the concepts of pCoMP and its capabilities regarding load balancing and resource scheduling preserving low complexity. pCoMP causes only a small amount of backhaul traffic which makes it possible to be used as a cost efficient solution to increase the spectral efficiency.