Improving Cell-Edge User Performance with Multi-Streaming

Currently deployed cellular data systems limit any user to downlink reception from a single base station. Recent standardization work on newer revisions of the HRPD and HSPA air-interface technologies relaxes this constraint by allowing multiple base stations operating on the same carrier frequency to transmit independent data streams targeted towards a single user. We characterize the regions of performance gain for this technology and investigate further improvements using advanced terminal receivers. The scheme is shown to be an effective load-balancing adaptation to bursty traffic at low to moderate loads. Furthermore, with a self successive interference cancellation capability at the device, further performance gains are demonstrated by favorably trading-off link adaptation loss for larger interference cancellation gains.