Multi-Objective Optimization of Coordinated Multipoint-Aided MIMO-OFDMA Systems With Frequency Reuse

Recent years have seen an upsurge in novel techniques to satisfy the ambitious requirements of modern wireless cellular systems in terms of area spectral efficiency whereby users located anywhere in the cell, even at the edge, should be able to obtain a reasonably large throughput. In particular, interference control/cancellation techniques based on different forms of frequency reuse (FR) and coordinated multipoint transmission (CoMP) have shown great potential to realize such a goal. This paper proposes a framework to evaluate the combination of FR and CoMP from a multi-objective performance point of view, where different metrics related to capacity and fairness can be incorporated. This framework rests on a physical layer abstraction derived for the particular case of block diagonalization-based MIMO processing, a widely used technique known to perform close to optimality yet remaining computationally simple. For the derived results to be practically relevant, all wireless channel effects have been considered (e.g., large and small propagation losses, shadowing, and antenna directivity) as well as the existence of per-base power constraints when using CoMP. Numerical simulations show that the design of the FR parameters play a key role in the overall network performance and suggest the use of utility-based functions that combine various metrics as a suitable mechanism to conduct this optimization.