Field trial evaluation of compression algorithms for distributed antenna systems

Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) in the cellular uplink, offering large improvements in spectral efficiency and fairness, appears to be an effective option to combat inter-cell interference. Current approaches range from coordinated scheduling to coherent joint detection. A major drawback of coherent joint detection is the large extent of additional backhaul infrastructure required for the exchange of received signals among base stations. Theoretical research on this topic emphasizes the benefits of source coding as a method to reduce the backhaul that is required. This paper complements previous publications through field trial results obtained in a representative urban setup. Different scalar and vector compression algorithms are compared in terms of their complexity as well as the average distortion of the compressed signal. System performance, evaluated in terms of the SINR of the equalized transmit signals, was determined for measurement data to investigate performance of compression algorithms under real-world conditions.