Distributed Interference Matched Scheduling for Multicell Environment

We address the problem of multiuser co-channel interference scheduling in multicell interference-limited networks. Our target is to optimize the network capacity under the SIR-balanced power control policy. Since it's difficult to optimize the original problem, we derive a new problem which maximizes the lower bound of the network capacity. Based on the analysis of this new problem, we propose an interference matched scheduling algorithm. This algorithm considers the caused co-channel interference and the channel conditions to schedule the "matched" users at the same time. We prove that this interference matched scheduling algorithm optimizes the lower bound of the network capacity for any arbitrary numbers of cells and users. Moreover, this scheduling method is low-complexity and can be implemented in a fully distributed fashion. Simulation results reveal that the performance of the proposed algorithm achieves near optimal capacity, even though it does not optimize the network capacity directly. Finally, the proposed algorithm holds a great gain over formerly proposed round robin and power matched scheduling method, especially when the scale of the network is large.