Coordinated multipoint transmission and reception in LTE-advanced: deployment scenarios and operational challenges

3GPP has completed a study on coordinated multipoint transmission and reception techniques to facilitate cooperative communications across multiple transmission and reception points (e.g., cells) for the LTE-Advanced system. In CoMP operation, multiple points coordinate with each other in such a way that the transmission signals from/to other points do not incur serious interference or even can be exploited as a meaningful signal. The goal of the study is to evaluate the potential performance benefits of CoMP techniques and the implementation aspects including the complexity of the standards support for CoMP. This article discusses some of the deployment scenarios in which CoMP techniques will likely be most beneficial and provides an overview of CoMP schemes that might be supported in LTE-Advanced given the modern silicon/DSP technologies and backhaul designs available today. In addition, practical implementation and operational challenges are discussed. We also assess the performance benefits of CoMP in these deployment scenarios with traffic varying from low to high load.