Cluster-Based Cooperative MIMO-OFDMA Cellular Networks: Scheduling and Resource Allocation

In this work, a cross-layer framework is proposed for scheduling and resource allocation in the context of cooperative wideband wireless cellular systems supporting heterogeneous traffic. To this end, the network is partitioned into clusters, each comprising a small number of base stations that share data and/or control information and thus are able to apply cluster-wide cooperative multiple-antenna techniques such as network MIMO (N-MIMO) or large-scale MIMO (LS-MIMO). In contrast to previous works whose main goal was the study of purely physical layer metrics, the framework proposed here serves to evaluate the network performance in terms of operator-relevant metrics such as the average user throughput, the average delay, or different fairness indices. The cross-layer design introduced here is general enough to encompass various forms of power allocation or scheduling policies while being able to incorporate per-cluster or per-base power constraints. Remarkably, different greedy algorithms are introduced for both N-MIMO and LS-MIMO that effectively exploit the multiuser and frequency diversity of the system while remaining computationally feasible. A particularly interesting application of the proposed framework, explored in detail in this paper, is a thorough and realistic comparison of the performance of N-MIMO and LS-MIMO that reveals the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy in terms of different performance metrics.