Distributed Iterative Multiuser Detection through Base Station Cooperation

This paper deals with multiuser detection through base station cooperation in an uplink, interference-limited, high frequency reuse scenario. Distributed iterative detection (DID) is an interference mitigation technique in which the base stations at different geographical locations exchange detected data iteratively while performing separate detection and decoding of their received data streams. This paper explores possible DID receive strategies and proposes to exchange between base stations only the processed information for their associated mobile terminals. The resulting backhaul traffic is considerably lower than that of existing cooperative multiuser detection strategies. Single-antenna interference cancellation techniques are employed to generate local estimates of the dominant interferers at each base station, which are then combined with their independent received copies from other base stations, resulting in more effective interference suppression. Since hard information bits or quantized log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) are transferred, we investigate the effect of quantization of the LLR values with the objective of further reducing the backhaul traffic. Our findings show that schemes based on nonuniform quantization of the "soft bits" allow for reducing the backhaul to 1–2 exchanged bits/coded bit.