A Tractable Model for Non-Coherent Joint-Transmission Base Station Cooperation

This paper presents a tractable model for analyzing non-coherent joint transmission base station (BS) cooperation, taking into account the irregular BS deployment typically encountered in practice. Besides cellular-network specific aspects such as BS density, channel fading, average path loss and interference, the model also captures relevant cooperation mechanisms including user-centric BS clustering and channel-dependent cooperation activation. The locations of all BSs are modeled by a Poisson point process. Using tools from stochastic geometry, the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio ($\mathtt{SINR}$) distribution with cooperation is precisely characterized in a generality-preserving form. The result is then applied to practical design problems of recent interest. We find that increasing the network-wide BS density improves the $\mathtt{SINR}$, while the gains increase with the path loss exponent. For pilot-based channel estimation, the average spectral efficiency saturates at cluster sizes of around $7$ BSs for typical values, irrespective of backhaul quality. Finally, it is shown that intra-cluster frequency reuse is favorable in moderately loaded cells with generous cooperation activation, while intra-cluster coordinated scheduling may be better in lightly loaded cells with conservative cooperation activation.