User Rate Evaluation of Dynamic Clustering in Homogeneous Small Cell Networks

Multiple base station (BS) cooperation and denser BS deployment have been recognized as two promising ways to improve the system capacity of the next generation wireless communication systems. In practice, to avoid the formidable overhead of the whole network cooperation, BSs can form disjoint or overlapped groups (i.e., clusters) and adopt limited cooperation. In this paper, we investigate the performance of BS clustering in homogeneous small cell networks (SCNs). Based on the clustering methods for macrocell networks, a dynamic clustering algorithm is proposed to adapt to the SCN where the number of BSs is much larger than the scheduled users´. Simulations show that the dynamic clustering with proper beamforming method leads to significant sum-rate gains over the non-cooperative one and the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional channel strength based ones in our network structure. Performance of dynamic clustering in a SCN where each BS schedules a single user is also evaluated.