  In cellular networks, admission control and beamforming optimization are
intertwined problems. While beamforming optimization aims at satisfying users'
quality-of-service (QoS) requirements or improving the QoS levels, admission
control looks at how a subset of users should be selected so that the
beamforming optimization problem can yield a reasonable solution in terms of
the QoS levels provided. However, in order to simplify the design, the two
problems are usually seen as separate problems. This paper considers joint
admission control and beamforming (JACoB) under a coordinated multicell MISO
downlink scenario. We formulate JACoB as a user number maximization problem,
where selected users are guaranteed to receive the QoS levels they requested.
The formulated problem is combinatorial and hard, and we derive a convex
approximation to the problem. A merit of our convex approximation formulation
is that it can be easily decomposed for per-base-station decentralized
optimization, namely, via block coordinate decent. The efficacy of the proposed
decentralized method is demonstrated by simulation results.
