User equipment enhancements for cooperative multi-point communication

1. A method for wireless communication, comprising:

determining, at a user equipment (UE) served by at least one base station (BS), a reference signal (RS) configuration indicating resources on which one or more neighbor BSs transmit RS or data;

estimating interference observed at the UE caused by the neighbor BSs, based on RS or data transmitted by the neighbor BSs on the indicated resources, wherein the estimating comprises:

receiving a bundling size indicating a number of consecutive physical resource blocks (PRBs) over which at least one of beams and transmit powers used by at least one neighbor BS remains constant; and

estimating interference assuming that interference can change drastically at the boundaries of said sets of consecutive PRBs;

computing a channel state information (CSI) using said interference estimate; and

sending the CSI to the serving BS for use in coordinating transmissions with the neighbor BSs.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein:

the neighbor BSs use beamforming on the indicated resources; and

the CSI is sent to the serving BS for use in coordinating transmissions with the neighbor BSs.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the RS comprises channel state information-reference signal (CSI-RS).

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the determining comprises decoding a value that indicates a particular CSI-RS configuration, provided by the serving BS.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the particular C SI-RS configuration comprises a zero-power CSI-RS configuration for the serving cell.

6. The method of claim 4 , further comprising receiving, from the serving BS, a muted CSI-RS configuration which is different than the muted CSI-RS configurations provided by adjacent BSs to their UEs.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein each BS mutes on both the CSI-RS configuration provided to its own UEs and the CSI-RS configurations provided by adjacent BSs to their UEs.

8. The method of claim 4 , wherein the UE is configured to use any transmission mode between 1 and 8 and uses the provided CSI-RS configuration.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the RS configuration defines multiple resource elements (REs) per resource block (RB) per antenna port on which to estimate interference caused by the neighbor BSs.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein multiple RS configurations are provided to the UE to estimate interference caused by the neighbor BSs.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the UE receives the bundling size from the serving BS via a suitable radio resource control (RRC) information element.

12. An apparatus for wireless communication, comprising:

means for determining, at a user equipment (UE), a reference signal (RS) configuration indicating resources on which one or more neighbor BSs transmit RS or data;

means for estimating interference observed at the UE caused by the neighbor BSs, based on RS or data transmitted by the neighbor BSs on the indicated resources, wherein the means for estimating comprises:

means for receiving a bundling size indicating a number of consecutive physical resource blocks (PRBs) over which at least one of beams and transmit powers used by the neighbor BS remains constant; and

means for estimating interference assuming that interference can change drastically at the boundaries of said sets of consecutive PRBs;

means for computing a channel state information (CSI) using said interference estimate; and

means for sending the CSI to the serving BS for use in coordinating transmissions with the neighbor BSs.

13. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein:

the neighbor BSs use beamforming on the indicated resources; and

the CSI is sent to the serving BS for use in coordinating beamformed transmissions with the neighbor BSs.

14. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein the RS comprises channel state information-reference signal (CSI-RS).

15. The apparatus of claim 14 , wherein the means for determining comprises means for decoding a value that indicates a particular CSI-RS configuration, provided by the serving BS.

16. The apparatus of claim 15 , wherein the particular CSI-RS configuration comprises a zero-power CSI-RS configuration for the serving cell.

17. The apparatus of claim 15 , further comprising means for receiving, from the serving BS, a muted CSI-RS configuration which is different than the CSI-RS configurations provided by adjacent BSs to their UEs.

18. The apparatus of claim 17 , wherein each BS mutes on both the CSI-RS configuration provided to its own UEs and the CSI-RS configurations provided by adjacent BSs to their UEs.

19. The apparatus of claim 15 , wherein the UE is configured to use any transmission mode between 1 and 8 and uses the provided CSI-RS configuration.

20. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein the RS configuration defines multiple resource elements (REs) per resource block (RB) per antenna port on which to estimate interference caused by the neighbor BSs.

21. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein multiple RS configurations are provided to the UE to estimate interference caused by the neighbor BSs.

22. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein the UE receives the bundling size from the serving BS via a suitable radio resource control (RRC) information element.

23. An apparatus for wireless communication, comprising:

at least one processor adapted to:

determine, at a user equipment (UE) served by at least one serving base station (BS), a reference signal (RS) configuration indicating resources on which one or more neighbor BSs transmit RS or data;

estimate interference observed at the UE caused by the neighbor BSs, based on RS or data transmitted by the neighbor BSs on the indicated resources, wherein the estimate is performed by:

receiving a bundling size indicating a number of consecutive physical resource blocks (PRBs) over which at least one of beams and transmit powers used by the neighbor BS remains constant; and

estimating interference assuming that interference can change drastically at the boundaries of said sets of consecutive PRBs;

compute a channel state information (CSI) using said interference estimate; and

send the CSI to the serving BS for use in coordinating transmissions with the neighbor BSs; and

a memory coupled to the at least one processor.

24. A computer-program product comprising a computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon, the instructions executable by one or more processors for:

determining, at a user equipment (UE), a reference signal (RS) configuration indicating resources for which at least one serving base station (BS) refrains from transmitting to the UE while one or more neighbor BSs transmit RS or data;

estimating interference observed at the UE caused by the neighbor BSs, based on RS or data transmitted by the neighbor BSs on the indicated resources, wherein the estimating comprises:

receiving a bundling size indicating a number of consecutive physical resource blocks (PRBs) over which at least one of beams and transmit powers used by the neighbor BS remains constant; and

estimating interference assuming that interference can change drastically at the boundaries of said sets of consecutive PRBs;

computing a channel state information (CSI) using said interference estimate; and

sending the CSI to the serving BS for use in coordinating transmissions with the neighbor BSs.