Abstract Downlink weighted sum rate maximizing beamformer design is considered for joint processing (JP) coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission. Global channel state information exchange, required by the centralized JP CoMP processing, is in many scenarios impractical due to the backhaul latency and capacity requirements. Low overhead decentralized processing enables JP even with limited backhaul capacity. The proposed best response (BR) design also takes into account the possibly non-orthogonal pilot design and noisy pilot estimation. By allowing spatially overlapping pilot sequences, the transceiver processing requires only the channel state information of locally served users. This enables more flexible pilot design and makes the proposed approach realizable in practical time correlated and noisy channel conditions. Furthermore, the proposed BR algorithm provides low signaling overhead for systems with limited backhaul capacity. Robustness for fading channel conditions and limited pilot resources is shown by numerical examples.