Sum-Rate Maximization in the Multicell MIMO Broadcast Channel With Interference Coordination

This paper studies the precoding designs to maximize the weighted sum-rate (WSR) in a multicell multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast channel (BC). We consider a multicell network under universal frequency reuse with multiple mobile stations (MS) per cell. With interference coordination (IC) between the multiple cells, the base-station (BS) at each cell only transmits information signals to the MSs within its cell using the dirty paper coding (DPC) technique, while coordinating the inter-cell interference (ICI) induced to other cells. The main focus of this work is to jointly optimize the encoding covariance matrices across the BSs in order to maximize the network-wide WSR. Since this optimization problem is shown to be nonconvex, obtaining its globally optimal solution is highly complicated. To address this problem, we consider two low-complexity solution approaches with distributed implementation to obtain at least locally optimal solutions. In the first approach, by applying a successive convex approximation technique, the original nonconvex problem is decomposed into a sequence of simpler problems, which can be solved optimally and separately at each BS. In the second approach, the WSR problem is solved via an equivalent problem of weighted sum mean squared error minimization. Both solution approaches will unfold the control signaling among the coordinated BSs to allow their distributed implementation. Simulation results confirm the convergence of the proposed algorithms, as well as their superior performances over schemes with linear precoding or no interference coordination among the BSs.