Multi-Cell Interference Mitigation for MIMO Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems

This letter proposes a downlink multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) non-orthogonal multiple access technique that mitigates multi-cell interference (MCI) at cell-edge users, regardless of the number of interfering cells, thereby improving the spectral efficiency. This technique employs specific receive beamforming vectors at the cell-edge users in clusters to minimize the MCI. Based on the receive beamforming vectors adopted by the cell-edge users, the transmit beamforming vectors for a base station (BS) and the receive beamforming vectors for cell-center users are designed to eliminate the inter-cluster interference and maximize the spectral efficiency. As each user can directly obtain its own receive beamforming vector, this technique does not require channel feedback from the users to a BS to design the receive beamforming vectors, thereby reducing the system overhead. We also derive the upper bound of the average sum rate achievable using the proposed technique. Finally, we demonstrate through simulations that the proposed technique achieves a better sum rate performance than the existing schemes and that the derived upper bound is valid.