A comprehensive review on coordinated multi-point operation for LTE-A

Abstract

With the enormous increase in application demands and user's data rate, high Quality of Service (QoS) has attracted significant attention from the mobile operators and academia in the past few years. Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) operation system provides a valid solution to enhanced throughput and coverage performance by reducing the interference, especially for cell-edge users. In CoMP operation, multiple Base Stations (BS) coordinate with each other in such a way that the user's information signal from neighboring evolved Node B (eNB) reduces interference or even can be combined to improve received signal quality. CoMP transmission is depending on the sharing coordination information via backhaul links, usually, consist of user's feedback that explains channel condition. This paper provides a brief vision into the CoMP technology including its architecture, sets, and promising approaches that can be employed in the future network. It discussion extends to the deployment scenarios in which CoMP schemes will likely be most beneficial in the modern backhaul designs available today. The study also covers the most well-known CoMP types such as coordinated scheduling and beamforming, joint transmission and dynamic point selection in detail along with its issues and current possible solutions. Most of the ideas presented are presently being studied and may diverge throughout the standardization work. In addition, a range of practical issues is identified and addressed in the deployment of CoMP in Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system, such as backhaul traffic, synchronization, and feedback design. This article provides an insight into the current research problem and also suggested the most challenging research gaps that may be useful for future research. It is shown that CoMP leads to both network throughput and capacity expansion in Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) network and can significantly provide more enhancements in spectrum efficiency and network performance gain with better cooperative coordination strategies.