Large scale field trial results on different uplink coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) concepts in an urban environment

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) concepts such as multi-cell joint detection and transmission, promising large improvements in spectral efficiency and fairness, appears to be an effective option to combat inter-cell interference in mobile communications. One major drawback of uplink joint detection is the large additional backhaul required when compared to a non-cooperative system. Theoretical work has demonstrated how distributed interference subtraction can be used as a low backhaul option providing moderate CoMP gain. While a large amount of theoretical work has been carried out on this topic, and previous publications have shown that these schemes work in principle, the scenarios of urban deployment and the extent of capacity gains that can be achieved are still unclear. To this end, we compare potential rate gains through linear and non-linear uplink CoMP schemes for a large scale field trial setup wherein two mobile terminals have been moved through an urban test bed of 12 base stations located at UMTS sites in downtown Dresden.