  This paper aims to minimize the total transmit power consumption for Massive
MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) downlink cellular systems when each user
is served by the optimized subset of the base stations (BSs). We derive a lower
bound on the ergodic spectral efficiency (SE) for Rayleigh fading channels and
maximum ratio transmission (MRT) when the BSs cooperate using non-coherent
joint transmission. We solve the joint user association and downlink transmit
power minimization problem optimally under fixed SE constraints. Furthermore,
we solve a max-min fairness problem with user specific weights that maximizes
the worst SE among the users. The optimal BS-user association rule is derived,
which is different from maximum signal-to-noise-ratio (max-SNR) association.
Simulation results manifest that the proposed methods can provide good SE for
the users using less transmit power than in small-scale systems and that the
optimal user association can effectively balance the load between BSs when
needed.
