Attainable throughput of an interference-limited multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cellular system

We investigate the high spectral efficiency capabilities of a cellular data system that combines the following: 1) multiple transmit signals, each using a separately adaptive modulation; 2) adaptive array processing at the receiver; and 3) aggressive frequency reuse (reuse in every cell). We focus on the link capacity between one user and its serving base station, for both uncoded and ideally coded transmissions. System performance is measured in terms of average data throughput, where the average is over user location, shadow fading, and fast fading. We normalize this average by the total bandwidth, call it the mean spectral efficiency, and show why this metric is a useful representation of system capability. We then quantify it, using simulations, to characterize multiple-input multiple-output systems performance for a wide variety of channel conditions and system design options.