
GESBERT et al.: MULTI-CELL MIMO COOPERATIVE NETWORKS: A NEW LOOK AT INTERFERENCE 1385
model, in which, however, there is no symmetry in the
inter-cell channel gains. Specifically, we have inter-cell
interference only from the left cells as L
= L, L
r
=0
and h
m,m−k
(t)=α
k
1, with α
0
=1, where, as above,
α
k
≥ 0 are deterministic quantities. This model accounts
for a scenario in which users are placed at the border
of the cell so that inter-cell interference is relevant only
on one side of the given cell. In a number of works,
including [23], [24], the Gaussian soft-handoff model is
studied with L =1, which can be seen as describing a
soft-handoff situation between two adjacent cells;
• Fading Wyner model: This model incorporates fading,
accounted for by random channel gains h
m,k
(t),inthe
Gaussian Wyner model. In particular, we have L
=
L
r
= L and h
m,m−k
(t)=α
k
˜
h
m,m−k
(t) where vectors
˜
h
m,m−k
(t),t∈ [1,n], are independent over m and k and
distributed according to a joint distribution π
k
with the
power of each entry of
˜
h
m,m−k
(t) normalized to one.
For simplicity, similar to the Gaussian Wyner model,
statistical symmetric inter-cell interference is assumed,
i.e., α
k
= α
−k
(and α
0
=1)and π
k
= π
−k
. As for
temporal variations, two scenarios are typical: (i) Quasi-
static fading: Channels
˜
h
m,m−k
(t) are constant over the
transmission of a given codeword (i.e., for t ∈ [1,n]); (ii)
Ergodic fading: Channels
˜
h
m,m−k
(t) vary in an ergodic
fashion along the symbols of the codeword. The ergodic
model was studied in [25] with L =1;
• Fading soft-handoff model: This model is the fading
counterpart of the Gaussian soft-handoff model, and has
L
1
= L, L
2
=0, and h
m,m−k
(t)=α
k
˜
h
m,m−k
(t)
where
˜
h
m,m−k
(t) are independent and modelled as for
the fading Wyner model. This scenario was considered
in [26], [27] (under more general conditions on the joint
distribution of vectors
˜
h
m,m−k
(t)).
In order to remove edge effects, we will focus on the regime of
a large number of cells, i.e., M →∞. This way, all cells see
exactly the same inter-cell interference scenario, possibly in a
statistical sense, as discussed above. An alternative approach,
considered, e.g., in [8], [23], would be to consider a system
in which cells are placed on a circle, which would exhibit
homogeneous inter-cell interference for any finite M. It is
noted that, however, the two models coincide in the limit of
large M and, in practice, results for the two models are very
close for relatively small values of M [21].
We now rewrite model (3) in a more compact matricial
form. We drop dependence on time t for simplicity. To
proceed, construct a M × MK channel matrix H such that
mth row collects all channel gains to mth BS, i.e., [h
T
m,1
,
h
T
m,2
, ..., h
T
m,m
, h
T
m,m+1
, ..., h
T
m,M
], where h
T
m,m−k
with
k/∈ [−L
r
,L
] are to be considered as zero. We can then
write the M × 1 vector of received signals y =[y
1
, ..., y
M
]
T
as
y = Hx + z, (5)
where x =[x
T
1
···x
T
M
]
T
is the vector of transmitted signals
and z the uncorrelated vector of unit-power Gaussian noises.
From the definition above, it is clear that, in general, H is a
finite-band matrix (in the sense that only a finite number of
diagonals have non-zero entries). Moreover, it is not difficult
cell number
m -1
base station
mm + 1
base station
(a)
(b)
CP
C
C
C
CC
Fig. 4. Backhaul models for MCP: (a) Central processor (CP) with finite-
capacity backhaul links (of capacity C); (b) Local finite-capacity backhaul
between adjacent BSs (of capacity C, uni- or bi-directional). Dashed lines
represent backhaul links.
to see that for Gaussian Wyner and Gaussian soft-handoff
models, matrix H has a block-Toeplitz structure, which will
be useful in the following.
2) Downlink: Define as y
m
the K × 1 vector of signals
received by the K MSs in the mth cell, y =[y
T
1
···y
T
M
]
T
,
and x as the M × 1 transmitted signal by the BSs. We then
have from (2)
y = H
†
x + z, (6)
where z is the vector of unit-power uncorrelated complex
Gaussian noise and channel matrix H is defined as above.
We assume a per-BS (and thus per-cell) power constraint
1
n
n
t=1
|[x(t)]
m
|
2
≤ P for all m ∈ [1,M].
3) Multi-Cell Processing: For both uplink and downlink,
we will consider the two following models for the backhaul
links that enable MCP, see Fig. 4.
• Central processor (CP) with finite-capacity backhaul
(Fig. 4-(a)): In this case, all BSs are connected to a CP for
joint decoding (for uplink) or encoding (for downlink) via
finite-capacity backhaul links of capacity C [bits/channel
use]. Recall that the original works [8], [9], [12] assume
unlimited backhaul capacity, i.e., C →∞;
• Local finite-capacity backhaul between adjacent BSs
(Fig. 4-(b)): Here BSs are connected to their neigh-
boring BSs only via finite-capacity links of capacity C
[bits/channel use], that may be uni- or bi-directional.
It is noted that two models coincide in the case of unlimited
backhaul capacity C →∞. Also, we remark that another
popular model assumes that only BSs within a certain cluster
of cells are connected to a CP for decoding. This model will
be considered as well, albeit briefly, below.
C. Capacity Results for the Wyner Uplink Model
In the rest of this section, we elaborate on the per-cell
sum-rate achievable for the uplink of the Wyner-type models
without relays reviewed above. When not stated otherwise, we
will focus on the Gaussian Wyner model. Fading models are
discussed in Sec. III-C5. Throughout, we assume that channel
state information (CSI) on gains {α
k
} is available at all nodes.