  User scheduling and multiuser multi-antenna (MU-MIMO) transmission are at the
core of high rate data-oriented downlink schemes of the next-generation of
cellular systems (e.g., LTE-Advanced). Scheduling selects groups of users
according to their channels vector directions and SINR levels. However, when
scheduling is applied independently in each cell, the inter-cell interference
(ICI) power at each user receiver is not known in advance since it changes at
each new scheduling slot depending on the scheduling decisions of all
interfering base stations. In order to cope with this uncertainty, we consider
the joint operation of scheduling, MU-MIMO beamforming and Automatic Repeat
reQuest (ARQ). We develop a game-theoretic framework for this problem and build
on stochastic optimization techniques in order to find optimal scheduling and
ARQ schemes. Particularizing our framework to the case of "outage service
rates", we obtain a scheme based on adaptive variable-rate coding at the
physical layer, combined with ARQ at the Logical Link Control (ARQ-LLC). Then,
we present a novel scheme based on incremental redundancy Hybrid ARQ (HARQ)
that is able to achieve a throughput performance arbitrarily close to the
"genie-aided service rates", with no need for a genie that provides
non-causally the ICI power levels. The novel HARQ scheme is both easier to
implement and superior in performance with respect to the conventional
combination of adaptive variable-rate coding and ARQ-LLC.
