An efficient cooperative user selection scheme in LTE cooperative communication systems

Focusing on the high computational complexity of cooperative selection methods in LTE uplink channels, an improved user selection method is proposed in this paper. The selection method is based on the channel quality and signal-to-noise (SNR) of cooperative user. This method is mainly divided into the following two steps: firstly, the user with poor quality channel condition selects a user with better channel condition as its candidate cooperative user; secondly, the method needs to consider the channel environment between the candidate cooperative user and the base station. Thus, the cooperative user could be selected after those two steps. Simulation results show that the cooperative user selection method can not only reduce the bit error rate (BER), but also improve the capacity of the system. Moreover, the proposed method has not much effect on the success rate of the cooperative user selection process. So the transmission efficiency can be improved and the system performance can be optimized.