Distributed Uplink Signal Processing of Cooperating Base Stations Based on IQ Sample Exchange

Cellular systems in general suffer from co-channel interference, when simultaneous transmissions in other cells use the same physical resources. In order to mitigate such co-channel interference cooperating Base Stations (BSs) can perform joint multi-antenna signal processing across cell borders. This paper describes a concept of distributed cooperation, where BSs communicate directly via a BS-BS interface without central control. A serving BS can serve its terminals on its own or it can request cooperation from one or more supporting BSs. By collecting IQ samples from the supporting BSs´ antenna elements, the serving BS can virtually increase its number of receive antennas. Exchanging additional parameters allows applying advanced receiver algorithms, e.g., interference rejection or cancelation. Performance evaluations by means of simulation show the capability of BS cooperation applied to 3GPP LTE in terms of cell and user throughput but it also shows the tradeoff in terms of increased backhaul requirement due to BS-BS communication.