Unlocking wireless performance with co-operation in co-located base station pools

Multi-cell base station co-operation techniques, ranging from load-balancing, joint resource-allocation to macro-diversity schemes, have been known to improve wireless system performance significantly by exploiting the higher degrees of freedom to make more optimized decisions. However, the realization of these techniques has remained limited largely due to constraints on inter-BS communication and the latencies involved in information exchange for distributed base stations. Base station pooling is an interesting alternative network architecture where all the BS computational resources (enabled by software radio) are pooled in a central location and connected via fiber to simple radio-front ends mounted on remote cell-towers. In this paper, we study the potential of base station co-operation in a pooled base station model, and present some of its advantages with a focus on interference, macro-diversity and mobility management.

[1]  Hung-Min Sun,et al.  Efficient Authentication Schemes for Handover in Mobile WiMAX , 2008, 2008 Eighth International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications.

[2]  Dennis Goeckel.  Macroscopic Space-Time Coding: Motivation, Performance Criteria, and a Class of Orthogonal Designs , 2003 .

[3]  Syed Ali Jafar,et al.  Interference Alignment and Degrees of Freedom of the $K$-User Interference Channel , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[4]  Stefania Sesia,et al.  LTE - The UMTS Long Term Evolution, Second Edition , 2011 .

[5]  Wenhua Jiao,et al.  Fast Handover Scheme for Real-Time Applications in Mobile WiMAX , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Conference on Communications.

[6]  David Tse,et al.  Interference mitigation through limited receiver cooperation: Symmetric case , 2009, 2009 IEEE Information Theory Workshop.

[7]  Jaewon Kim,et al.  Performance of Cooperative Transmission Schemes Using Distributed Antennas , 2008, 2008 5th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference.

[8]  Ieee Microwave Theory,et al.  Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed and Mobile Broadband Wireless Access Systems — Amendment for Physical and Medium Access Control Layers for Combined Fixed and Mobile Operation in Licensed Bands , 2003 .

[9]  David Tse,et al.  Fundamentals of Wireless Communication , 2005 .

[10]  I. Forkel,et al.  Performance evaluation of soft handover in a realistic UMTS network , 2003, The 57th IEEE Semiannual Vehicular Technology Conference, 2003. VTC 2003-Spring..

[11]  Qing Wang,et al.  Wireless network cloud: Architecture and system requirements , 2010, IBM J. Res. Dev..

[12]  Siavash M. Alamouti,et al.  A simple transmit diversity technique for wireless communications , 1998, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[13]  Anna Scaglione,et al.  Randomized cooperation in asynchronous dispersive links , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Communications.

[14]  Jiann-Der Lee,et al.  Pre-Coordination Mechanism for Fast Handover in WiMAX Networks , 2007, The 2nd International Conference on Wireless Broadband and Ultra Wideband Communications (AusWireless 2007).

[15]  Titus K. Y. Lo.  Maximum ratio transmission , 1999, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[16]  Jeffrey G. Andrews,et al.  Fundamentals of WiMAX: Understanding Broadband Wireless Networking (Prentice Hall Communications Engineering and Emerging Technologies Series) , 2007 .

[17]  Dirk Wübben,et al.  Influence of Non-Reciprocal Transceivers at 2 . 4 GHz in Adaptive MIMO-OFDM Systems , 2009 .

[18]  Xiaodong Wang,et al.  Coordinated load balancing, handoff/cell-site selection, and scheduling in multi-cell packet data systems , 2008, Wirel. Networks.

[19]  Jeffrey G. Andrews,et al.  Multiuser space-time block coded MIMO system with downlink precoding , 2004 .

[20]  David Gesbert,et al.  Adaptation, Coordination, and Distributed Resource Allocation in Interference-Limited Wireless Networks , 2007, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[21]  Bhaskar Ramamurthi.  Cutting edge at the cell edge: Co-channel interference mitigation in emerging broadband wireless systems , 2009, 2009 First International Communication Systems and Networks and Workshops.

[22]  Malolan Chetlur,et al.  Macro-scheduling of base stations for video-on-demand flows in WiMAX networks , 2010, 2010 IEEE 18th International Workshop on Quality of Service (IWQoS).

[23]  L. Thiele,et al.  MU-MIMO with Localized Downlink Base Station Cooperation and Downtilted Antennas , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops.

[24]  Syed Ali Jafar,et al.  Approaching the Capacity of Wireless Networks through Distributed Interference Alignment , 2008, IEEE GLOBECOM 2008 - 2008 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference.

[25]  Lars Thiele,et al.  Capacity Measurements in a Cooperative MIMO Network , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[26]  Yang Richard Yang,et al.  Proportional Fairness in Multi-Rate Wireless LANs , 2008, IEEE INFOCOM 2008 - The 27th Conference on Computer Communications.

[27]  Jeffrey G. Andrews,et al.  Fundamentals of WiMAX: Understanding Broadband Wireless Networking , 2007 .