Abstract
With the emergence and continuous growth of wireless data services, the value of wireless networks is not only defined by how many users it can support, but also by its ability to concentrate large amounts of data capacity at localized spots. Information theory provides a mathematical framework which quantifies the maximum achievable data rate over a communication channel. More importantly, information theoretic study for capacity of cellular systems suggests base station cooperation as a mean of overcoming inter-cell interference limitations. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the information theoretic capacity of the cellular uplink. In order to quantify the performance of the current and future engineering solutions, the designers need to know the rate limits that a particular multi-user cellular system can provide and how far from the limit, lays the efficiency of their design. The gap between the information theoretic limit and the performance of currently known systems will also determine if the current systems are already saturated or have a potential to provide higher rates. More specifically, the thesis focuses on extending the known formulations for the cellular uplink under BS cooperation by; 1) incorporating, modeling and investigating the various effects of the multi-user channel that correspond to a real-world communication system (e.g. path loss, multipath and shadow fading, thermal noise) to provide a fundamental limit for the capacity of the wireless cellular network, 2) evaluating the effect of various practical parameters of real-world cellular systems on capacity, such as inter site distance, number of UTs per-cell, UT distribution over the cells, UT transmit power, 3) investigating how multiple directional antennas for site sectorization may improve the networks communication rates and, 4) exploring the achieving communication rates of clustered cellular systems as a more feasible strategy to be implemented nowadays to find when clustered cooperation becomes more beneficial.