Distributed Multicell and Multiantenna Precoding: Characterization and Performance Evaluation

This paper considers downlink multiantenna communication with base stations that perform cooperative precoding in a distributed fashion. Most previous work in the area has assumed that transmitters have common knowledge of both data symbols of all users and full or partial channel state information (CSI). Herein, we assume that each base station only has local CSI, either instantaneous or statistical. For the case of instantaneous CSI, a parametrization of the beamforming vectors used to achieve the outer boundary of the achievable rate region is obtained for two multi-antenna transmitters and two single-antenna receivers. Distributed generalizations of classical beamforming approaches that satisfy this parametrization are provided, and it is shown how the distributed precoding design can be improved using the so-called virtual SINR framework. Conceptually analog results for both the parametrization and the beamforming design are derived in the case of local statistical CSI. Heuristics on the distributed power allocation are provided in both cases, and the performance is illustrated numerically.