Distributed antenna selection for OFDM space-time block coded diversity

Antenna selection is an important issue for a distributed antenna-based small-cell network (DAN). This paper proposes a distributed antenna (DA) selection for DAN downlink using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and spacetime block coded (STBC) diversity. The proposed DA selection is an iterative algorithm which determines DA groups (each group consists of DAs communicating with a different user equipment (UE)) to maximize the downlink sum capacity by taking into account co-channel interference (CCI). In each iteration, one DA is added/removed to/from one of current DA groups if this increases the sum capacity by the largest amount. This is repeated until the sum capacity starts to decrease or by the prescribed number of times. It is shown by computer simulation that the proposed DA selection algorithm increases the 10% outage sum capacity by about 20% compared to the received signal power-based DA selection (no CCI is considered).