Downlink performance and capacity of distributed antenna systems in a multicell environment

Distributed antenna systems (DAS) have been widely implemented in state-of-the art cellular communication systems to cover dead spots. Recent academic studies have shown that in addition to coverage improvements, DAS can also have potential advantages such as reduced power and increased system capacity in a single cell environment. This paper analytically quantifies downlink capacity of multicell DAS for two different transmission strategies: selection diversity (where just one or two of the distributed antennas are used) and blanket transmission (where all antennas in the cell broadcast data). Simple repeaters are a special case of our analysis. A generalized information theoretic analysis is provided to…