Joint Scheduling and Beamforming via Cloud-Radio Access Networks Coordination

Cloud radio access network (CRAN) emerges as a promising architecture for large-scale interference management. This paper addresses the benefit of one particular type of coordinated resource allocation in CRANs through the combined effect of joint scheduling and beamforming. Consider the downlink of a CRAN where the cloud is connected to several remote radio heads (RRHs), each equipped with multiple antennas. The transmit frame of every RRH is formed by several radio resource blocks (RRBs), each capable of serving multiple single-antenna users via spatial multiplexing using beamforming. The paper focuses on the problem of maximizing the network-wide weighted sum-rate by jointly determining the set of scheduled users at each RRB, and their corresponding beamforming vectors. The main contribution of the paper is to solve such a mixed discrete-continuous optimization problem using a graph-theoretical based approach. The paper introduces the joint scheduling and beamforming graph, wherein each independent set accounts for a feasible schedule and feasible beamforming vectors. Afterward, the joint scheduling and beamforming problem is shown to be equivalent to a maximum independent set problem in the proposed graph. Simulation results suggest that the proposed joint solution provides appreciable performance improvements as compared to the classical iterative approach.