System-level performance of LTE-Advanced with joint transmission and dynamic point selection schemes

In this article, we present a practical coordinated multipoint (CoMP) system for LTE-Advanced. In this CoMP system, cooperation is enabled for cell-edge users via dynamic switching between the normal single-cell operation and CoMP. We first formulate a general CoMP system model of several CoMP schemes. We then investigate a practical finite-rate feedback design that simultaneously supports interference coordination, joint transmission (JT), and dynamic point selection (DPS) with a varying number of cooperating transmission points while operating a single-cell transmission as a fallback mode. We provide both link-level and system-level results for the evaluation of different feedback options for general CoMP operation. The results show that there are substantial performance gains in cell-edge throughputs for both JT and DPS CoMP over the baseline Release 10 LTE-Advanced with practical feedback options. We also show that CoMP can enable improved mobility management in real networks.