Joint power allocation and base-station assignment based on pricing for the downlink in multi-class CDMA networks

In this paper, we study a joint power allocation and base-station assignment problem for the downlink in multi-class CDMA networks. In a previous paper (J.W. Lee et al., 2002), we developed a power allocation scheme based on a utility and pricing framework considering a single cell in the system. In this paper, we consider a multi-cell system in which each cell uses the power allocation algorithm developed in (J.W. Lee et al., 2002). Based on the power allocation algorithm, we propose a pricing based base-station assignment algorithm, which results in a joint power allocation and base-station assignment scheme. In this algorithm, a base-station is assigned to a mobile taking into account the congestion level of the cell as well as the transmission environment between the base-station and the mobile. We compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with that of the traditional SIR based base-station assignment algorithm. The result shows that our proposed algorithm outperforms the SIR based algorithm.