CoMP clustering and backhaul limitations in cooperative cellular mobile access networks

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission and reception is a promising solution for managing interference and increasing performance in future wireless cellular systems. Due to its strict requirements in terms of capacity, latency, and synchronization among cooperating Base Stations (BSs), its successful deployment depends on the capability of the mobile backhaul network infrastructure. We deal with the feasibility of CoMP transmission/reception, in particular of Joint Transmission (JT). For this, we first evaluate which cluster sizes are reasonable from the wireless point-of-view to achieve the desired performance gains. Thereafter, we analyze how different backhaul topologies (e. g., mesh and tree structures) and backhaul network technologies (e. g., layer-2 switching and single-copy multicast capabilities) can support these desired clusters. We study for different traffic scenarios and backhaul connectivity levels, which part of the desired BS clusters are actually feasible according to the backhaul characteristics. We found out that a significant mismatch exists between the desired and feasible clusters. Neglecting this mismatch causes overheads in real JT implementations, which complicates or even prevents their deployment. Based on our findings, we propose a clustering system architecture that not only includes wireless information, as done in the state of the art, but also combines wireless and backhaul network feasibility information in a smart way. This avoids unnecessary signaling and User Equipment (UE) data exchange among BSs which are not eligible to take part in the cooperative cluster. Evaluations show that our scheme reduces the signaling and UE data exchange overhead by up to 85% compared to conventional clustering approaches, which do not take into account the backhaul network's status. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.