Scheduling Algorithm for Coordinated Beamforming in Heterogeneous Macro / Pico LTE-Advanced Networks

Pico base stations are an important instrument to increase the capacity of mobile radio networks. Due to the limited spectrum availability it will be necessary to operate macro and pico base stations on the same frequency bands. In this case the transmit power imbalance between different base station types creates new interference situations. Coordinated beamforming is one method of base station cooperation that can be applied to mitigate interference in this scenario. The work presented here describes a scheduler for coordinated beamforming in an LTE-Advanced system which relies on sharing only the feedback information from the mobile stations between the base stations. System level simulation results show that this approach can decrease the interference experienced by the mobile stations attached to the pico base stations.