Vector Perturbation Precoding for Network MIMO: Sum Rate, Fair User Scheduling, and Impact of Backhaul Delay

The objective of this paper is to study the performance of a multicell vector perturbation (MVP) precoding technique under practical situations in a network multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scheme employing joint transmission. The conventional perturbation strategy that minimizes the total power is considered, and the power at each base station (BS) is properly scaled to enforce per-BS power constraints. In our scenario, we consider multiple-antenna users and use block diagonalization (BD) as the linear front-end precoder for VP. The sum rate for the MVP in the case of uniformly distributed input and an asymptotic upper bound on the sum rate at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) are derived. In addition, using the asymptotic upper bound on the individual user rates, we propose a proportionally fair (PF) user scheduling algorithm of lower complexity and better performance compared with the benchmark fair semiorthogonal user selection (SUS) algorithm. As opposed to the PF-SUS, the proposed PF scheduling algorithm requires no predefined correlation threshold. Furthermore, we study the impact of backhaul delay on the performance of both VP and BD by deriving bounds on the sum rate. The numerical results show that MVP in the case of perfect channel state information (CSI) outperforms multicell BD. In the presence of a backhaul delay, the performance of MVP significantly degrades, but the upper bound on the sum rate for MVP is still higher than for multicell BD.