Patent ID: 8867477

Claim:
A method executed by a scheduling apparatus of a wireless network, for scheduling Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication between a mobile terminal and multiple cooperative base stations located in a cooperative area and under control of said scheduling apparatus, said method comprising: acquiring signal-quality-related information between each of said multiple cooperative base stations and corresponding multiple mobile terminals in a vicinity of the base stations; determining a value which represents a difference in a quality of multiple optimal signals relevant to at least one of the mobile terminals as indicated by the acquired signal-quality-related information; and when the determined value is less than a first predetermined threshold, indicating at least two base stations among the multiple base stations relevant to said multiple optimal signals to serve as service base stations of said at least one mobile terminal and transmit, via a same time-frequency resource, a downlink signal to said at least one mobile terminal; wherein when said signal-quality-related information indicates that the signal quality between a mobile terminal and one of said multiple base stations is better, by at least a second predetermined threshold, than the signal quality between said mobile terminal and any other base station and said mobile terminal is located within said cooperative area, indicating a base station having an optimal signal quality for signals between said mobile terminal and said multiple base stations to serve as a service base station of said mobile terminal and transmit a downlink signal to said mobile terminal; and wherein said indicating at least two base stations to transmit, via the same time-frequency resource, the downlink signal to said at least one mobile terminal by utilizing one of space-time coding, spatial multiplexing or spatial diversity; and the method further comprises: controlling transmission of service data corresponding to said each mobile terminal to one or more service base stations of said each mobile terminal.