5G will have to support a multitude of new applications with a wide variety of requirements, including higher peak and user data rates, reduced latency, enhanced indoor coverage, increased number of devices, and so on. The expected traffic growth in 10 or more years from now can be satisfied by the combined use of more spectrum, higher spectral efficiency, and densification of cells. The focus of the present article is on advanced techniques for higher spectral efficiency and improved coverage for cell edge users. We propose a smart combination of small cells, joint transmission coordinated multipoint (JT CoMP), and massive MIMO to enhance the spectral efficiency with affordable complexity. We review recent achievements in the transition from theoretical to practical concepts and note future research directions. We show in measurements with macro-plus-small-cell scenarios that spectral efficiency can be improved by flexible clustering and efficient user selection, and that adaptive feedback compression is beneficial to reduce the overhead significantly. Moreover, we show in measurements that fast feedback reporting combined with advanced channel prediction are able to mitigate the impairment effects of JT CoMP

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Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission is considered as an efficient technique to improve cell-edge performance as well as system spectrum efficiency. In CoMPenabled systems, a cluster of coordinated base stations (BSs) are typically assumed to be connected to a control unit (CU) via backhaul links, and the provided performance gain relies heavily on the quality of the channel state information (CSI) available at the CU side. In this paper, we consider the downlink of a CoMP cluster and compare three different CoMP transmission schemes: zero-forcing coherent joint transmission, non-coherent joint transmission and coordinated scheduling. Moreover, for each of the analyzed schemes, the performance in terms of average sum rate of the CoMP cluster is studied with predicted CSI, considering the effects of the feedback and backhaul latency, as well as the user mobility. Compared to zero-forcing coherent joint transmission, we show that non-coherent joint transmission and coordinated scheduling are more robust to channel uncertainty. In addition, depending on the latency, user mobility and user locations, different schemes would achieve the highest average sum rate performance. Hence, a system could switch between the transmission schemes to improve the sum rate.

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Coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission provides high theoretic gains in spectral efficiency with coherent joint transmission (JT) to multiple users. However, this requires accurate channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) and also user groups with spatially compatible users. The aim of this paper is to use measured channels to investigate if significant CoMP gains can still be obtained with channel estimation errors. This turns out to be the case, but requires the combination of several techniques. We here focus on coherent downlink JT CoMP to multiple users within a cluster of cooperating base stations. The use of Kalman predictors is investigated to estimate the complex channel gains at the moment of transmission. It is shown that this can provide sufficient CSIT quality for JT CoMP even for long (>20 ms) system delays at 2.66 GHz at pedestrian velocities or, for lower delays, at 500 MHz, at vehicular velocities. A user grouping and resource allocation scheme that provides appropriate groups for CoMP is also suggested. It provides performance close to that obtained by exhaustive search at very low complexity, low feedback cost and very low backhaul cost. Finally, a robust linear precoder that takes channel uncertainties into account when designing the precoding matrix is considered. We show that, in challenging scenarios, this provides large gains compared with zero-forcing precoding. Evaluations of these design elements are based on measured channels with realistic noise and intercluster interference assumptions. These show that high JT CoMP gains can be expected, on average over large sets of user positions, when the above techniques are combined -especially in severely intracluster interference limited scenarios.