Antenna Port Selection in a Coordinated Cloud Radio Access Network

We investigate the optimization of antenna port selection in the downlink of a cloud radio access network in which a user terminal can be served by multiple ports. The goal is to maximize the minimum weighted signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios observed by the users while satisfying their quality-of-service requirements. This optimization is formulated as a mixed integer programming problem and solved using semidefinite relaxation and Gaussian randomization. It is shown that our technique outperforms baseline schemes by 6–8 dB.