User Scheduling for Distributed-Antenna Zero-Forcing Beamforming Downlink Multiuser MIMO-OFDM Systems

We describe a user scheduling scheme suitable for zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) downlink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmissions in time-division-duplex distributed antenna systems. This user scheduling scheme consists of inter-cell-interference mitigation scheduling by using fractional frequency reuse, proportional fair scheduling in the OFDM frequency domain, and high-capacity ZFBF-MU-MIMO scheduling by using zero-forcing with selection (ZFS). Simulation results demonstrate in a severe user-distribution condition that includes cell-edge users that the proposed user scheduling scheme achieves high average cell throughputs close to that provided by only ZFS and that it also achieves almost the same degree of user fairness as round-robin user scheduling.