Reverse link sum rate for multi-cell multi-user cellular systems with successive interference cancelation

This paper studies the optimal power control which can maximize the information-theoretical sum rate of the uplink of multi-cell, multi-user cellular systems equipped with successive interference cancelation (SIC). One important property for the optimal power control is presented: for the optimal power allocation, there will be at least one user transmitting at peak power in the system, and at most one user transmitting at part of the peak power in each cell. With this property, the peak throughput for multi-cell, multi-user cellular systems can be approached by simulated annealing algorithm. System level simulations show that the gain of SIC highly depends on the distribution of users. When users distribute uniformly in multi-cell cellular system, the gain of SIC is not obvious.