Comparison of Coordinated Beamforming and Non-Coordinated Multipoint using MMSE transceiver designs

The Coordinated Beamforming (CBF) and Non-Coordinated Multipoint (Non-CoMP) configurations are studied. The generalized iterative approach (GIA) is proposed to design the minimum mean square error (MMSE) transceivers for both configurations under arbitrary linear power constraints. In a cell edge setting, the number of transmitter receiver pairs in the system and the number of data streams per pair greatly influence whether the gains of the CBF configuration over the Non-CoMP configuration are significant or not. Furthermore, the knowledge of the noise plus interference covariance matrices is key to the Non-CoMP configuration's performance and the proposed GIA can actually perform interference alignment like maneuvers for the CBF configuration! On the other hand, in a non-cell edge setting, the performances of the CBF and Non-CoMP configurations are essentially the same.