Beamforming enhanced Multiflow HSDPA with interference cancellation

Recently, Multiflow transmission has been standardized as part of Multipoint High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). Multiflow schemes enable cell-edge HSDPA users to receive simultaneous data streams from multiple serving cells leading to improved user experience. The standard considers a single transmit antenna for each serving cell in a distributed Per Antenna Rate Control (PARC) manner. This paper investigates the potential gains of utilizing an extra antenna at each cell and hence enabling Beamforming. It is demonstrated that under the proposed transmission scheme, interference aware equalizers can be used without requiring knowledge about the Beamforming antenna weights of interfering cells. Furthermore, it is shown that combining transmit Beamforming with Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) at the receiver could significantly improve the performance of Multiflow schemes.