User-Centric Performance Optimization With Remote Radio Head Cooperation in C-RAN

In a cloud radio access network (C-RAN), distributed remote radio heads (RRHs) are coordinated by baseband units (BBUs) in the cloud. The centralization of signal processing provides flexibility for coordinated multipoint transmission (CoMP) of RRHs to cooperatively serve user equipments (UEs). We target enhancing UEs’ capacity performance, by jointly optimizing the selection of RRHs for serving UEs, i.e., CoMP selection, and resource allocation. We analyze the computational complexity of the problem. Next, we prove that under fixed CoMP selection, the optimal resource allocation amounts to solving a so-called iterated function. Towards user-centric network optimization, we propose an algorithm for the joint optimization problem, aiming at scaling up the capacity maximally for any target UE group of interest. The proposed algorithm enables network-level performance evaluation for quality of experience.