Patent ID: 8509831

Claim:
A distributed antenna system comprising: a plurality of users; a plurality of remote radio heads which are to be divided into clusters each including multiple remote radio heads; and a central base station (CBS) including a CBS processor, a CBS memory, a user ordering module, and a user scheduling and cluster formation module; wherein the user ordering module is configured to order the users in decreasing values of proportional fair scheduling metrics to provide a set of ordered users; and wherein the user scheduling and cluster formation module is configured to schedule the plurality of users according to the order of the users in decreasing values of proportional fair scheduling metrics; and for each user being scheduled according to the order of the plurality of users, pick up first N number of remote radio heads, in decreasing order of signal strength to the user being scheduled, which have not been picked up previously to form another cluster for another user, to form a cluster of size N for the user being scheduled, wherein the scheduling of the plurality of users and picking up of remote radio heads for each user being scheduled are performed over a period of time having a plurality of time instants, according to the order of the plurality of users at the plurality of time instants, wherein each cluster of remote radio heads has only one corresponding user.