Methods and devices for determining effective mutual information

1. A method, comprising:

receiving at a receiver circuit a composite signal comprising non-interfered data resource elements and interfered data resource elements from a plurality of radio cells;

determining a first mutual information metric based on the non-interfered data resource elements;

determining a second mutual information metric based on the interfered data resource elements; and

determining effective mutual information based on a combination of the first mutual information metric and the second mutual information metric;

determining for each precoder in a baseband circuit associated with the receiver circuit, and each rank, a maximum weighted mutual information based on the effective mutual information subject to a maximum criterion with respect to modulation types.

2. The method of claim 1 , comprising:

determining a noise and interference covariance measure of the composite signal based on a plurality of antenna ports and a plurality of cell-specific reference signals;

wherein determining the noise and covariance measure of the composite signal is based on at least one shifted cell-specific reference signal;

filtering a noise and interference covariance measure to generate a filtered noise and interference covariance measure; and

determining a plurality of channel estimates based on the filtered noise and interference covariance measure of the composite signal.

3. The method of claim 2 , comprising:

determining the channel estimates based on:

a cell-specific reference signal of undisturbed resource elements;

a first shifted cell-specific reference signal of disturbed resource elements; and

a second shifted cell-specific reference signal of disturbed resource elements;

wherein the second shifted cell-specific reference signal of disturbed resource elements is different than the first shifted cell-specific reference signal of disturbed resource elements.

4. The method of claim 2 , comprising:

determining the channel estimates based on a power offset between the interfered data resource elements of the composite signal and a cell-specific reference signal received from a target radio cell comprised in the composite signal.

5. The method of claim 2 , comprising:

determining a signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio based on the channel estimates for a particular subcarrier of a plurality of subcarriers and based on at least one of a modulation type, a precoder, and a rank.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the second mutual information metric is based on a function of a signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio, wherein the function depends on a modulation type.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

weighting the first mutual information metric with respect to a number of the non-interfered data resource elements; and

weighting the second mutual information metric with respect to a number of the interfered data resource elements.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising:

puncturing the second mutual information metric by using a weighting of zero.

9. The method of claim 7 , further comprising:

determining the effective mutual information based on a sum of the weighted first mutual information metric and the weighted second mutual information metric.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

determining for each rank an optimal precoder and corresponding effective mutual information based on a maximum criterion with respect to a sum of the maximum weighted mutual information over the precoders.

11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:

mapping the effective mutual information of the optimal precoders for each rank to a channel quality indicator table; and

determining a rank identifier configured to identify a rank optimizing a user equipment throughput.

12. A receiver circuit, comprising:

a first unit configured to receive a composite signal comprising non-interfered data resource elements and interfered data resource elements from a plurality of radio cells;

a second unit configured to determine a first mutual information metric based on the non-interfered data resource elements;

a third unit configured to determine a second mutual information metric based on the interfered data resource elements; and

a fourth unit configured to determine effective mutual information based on a combination of the first mutual information metric and the second mutual information metric;

wherein the third unit is configured to determine the second mutual information metric based on a noise and interference covariance matrix of the interfered data resource elements subject to an antenna port and a cell-specific reference signal shift configuration; and

a baseband circuit associated with the receiver circuit, to determine for each precoder and each rank, a maximum weighted mutual information based on the effective mutual information subject to a maximum criterion with respect to modulation types.

13. The receiver circuit of claim 12 ,

wherein the third unit is configured to determine channel estimates based on a noise and interference covariance measure.

14. The receiver circuit of claim 13 ,

wherein the third unit is configured to determine the second mutual information metric based on the channel estimates.

15. A mobile device, comprising:

a receiver circuit configured to receive a composite signal comprising non-interfered data resource elements and interfered data resource elements from a plurality of radio cells;

a baseband circuit configured to determine a first mutual information metric based on the non-interfered data resource elements, a second mutual information metric based on the interfered data resource elements and effective mutual information based on a combination of the first mutual information metric and the second mutual information metric;

a transmitter circuit configured to modulate a baseband signal comprising the effective mutual information on a radio frequency carrier and to transmit the modulated baseband signal through an air link to a base station;

wherein the baseband circuit is configured to determine the second mutual information metric based on a noise and interference covariance matrix of the interfered data resource elements subject to an antenna port and a cell-specific reference signal shift configuration;

wherein the baseband circuit determines for each precoder and each rank, a maximum weighted mutual information based on the effective mutual information subject to a maximum criterion with respect to modulation type.

16. The mobile device of claim 15 ,

wherein the baseband circuit is configured to determine the effective mutual information based on a weighted sum of the first mutual information metric and the second mutual information metric.

17. The mobile device of claim 15 ,

wherein the baseband circuit is configured to determine the second mutual information metric with respect to cell-specific information received from the plurality of radio cells comprised in the data resource elements of the composite signal.

18. The mobile device of claim 17 ,

wherein the baseband circuit is configured to determine the second mutual information metric with respect to an antenna port and a reference signal shift comprised in the cell-specific information.