A utility-based scheduling approach for multiple services in Coordinated Multi-Point networks

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) joint transmission is considered as a key technique to mitigate inter-cell interference (ICI) and improve the cell-edge performance in 3GPP LTE-Advanced. In this paper, a utility-based coordinated transmit scheduling method is proposed to support joint transmission in CoMP systems. The objective is to improve the cell-edge performance in downlink packet-based CoMP networks with mixed real-time voice over IP (VoIP) and best-effort (BE) traffic patterns. Via simulation results we show that compared to the traditional scheduling schemes with neither CoMP joint transmission nor diverse quality of service (QoS) provisioning, the proposed algorithm in this paper improves the cell-edge efficiency of BE users by greater than 45%, while better satisfying the QoS requirements for VoIP users with significant decrease in call outage by greater than 98%.