SINR Balancing via Base Station Association, Beamforming, and Power Control in Downlink Multicell MISO Systems

This paper considers the downlink channel of multicell multiuser multiple-input single-output systems with arbitrary architecture. We aim to maximize the minimum weighted signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) through user-base station (BS) association, coordinated beamforming among BSs, and power control subject to per BS power constraints. The problem is known to be NP-hard. In the high-SNR regime, where the performance is interference-limited, we globally optimize the upper bound, which is achieved asymptotically, of the balanced SINR. In the low-SNR regime, where the performance is restricted by the tightest per BS power constraint, we balance the transmit power using relaxed integer programming and group sparse optimization techniques. The two goals can be integrated to achieve a universally better performance. From the perspective of optimization methods, the corresponding algorithms are based on Lagrangian relaxation and are guaranteed to converge. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms outperform the existing algorithms designed for the downlink single-input single-output systems.