Rate region analysis of coordinated multi-cell downlink transmission with per-cell power constraint

Multi-cell cooperative processing (MCP) is widely recognized as a key technology for next generation cellular networks due to its promising potential of increasing the spectrum utilization efficiency. The performance of novel MCP schemes in terms of e.g., capacity, throughput, are mostly evaluated numerically but not analytically. Although the latter approach offers more insights into the true nature, the high complexity of coordinated multi-cell systems usually makes analytical derivation intractable. In this paper, we make a comprehensive study of the rate region achieved by different downlink MCP schemes with per-cell power constraints. We derive in closed form the corresponding rate region boundaries based on simple but representative Wyner type model. The obtained analytical results provide a useful reference of the performance and complexity tradeoff of those schemes.