Coordinated multipoint transmission/reception techniques for LTE-advanced [Coordinated and Distributed MIMO]

This article presents an elaborate coordination technique among multiple cell sites called coordinated multipoint transmission and reception in the Third Generation Partnership Project for LTE-Advanced. After addressing major radio access techniques in the LTE Release 8 specifications, system requirements and applied radio access techniques that satisfy the requirements for LTE-Advanced are described including CoMP transmission and reception. Then CoMP transmission and reception schemes and the related radio interface, which were agreed upon or are currently being discussed in the 3GPP, are presented. Finally, system-level simulation evaluations show that the CoMP transmission and reception schemes have a significant effect in terms of improving the cell edge user throughput based on LTE-Advanced simulation conditions.