Resource Allocation for Downlink Cellular OFDMA Systems—Part II: Practical Algorithms and Optimal Reuse Factor

In a companion paper (see ?Resource Allocation for Downlink Cellular OFDMA Systems-Part I: Optimal Allocation,?
IEEE Trans. Signal Process.
, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 720-734, Feb. 2010), we characterized the optimal resource allocation in terms of power control and subcarrier assignment, for a downlink sectorized OFDMA system impaired by multicell interference. In our model, the network is assumed to be one dimensional (linear) for the sake of analysis. We also assume that a certain part of the available bandwidth is likely to be reused by different base stations while that the other part of the bandwidth is shared in an orthogonal way between these base stations. The optimal resource allocation characterized in Part I is obtained by minimizing the total power spent by the network under the constraint that all users' rate requirements are satisfied. It is worth noting that when optimal resource allocation is used, any user receives data either in the reused bandwidth or in the protected bandwidth, but not in both (except for at most one pivot-user in each cell). We also proposed an algorithm that determines the optimal values of users' resource allocation parameters. As a matter of fact, the optimal allocation algorithm proposed in Part I requires a large number of operations. In the present paper, we propose a distributed practical resource allocation algorithm with low complexity. We study the asymptotic behavior of both this simplified resource allocation algorithm and the optimal resource allocation algorithm of Part I as the number of users in each cell tends to infinity. Our analysis allows to prove that the proposed simplified algorithm is asymptotically optimal, i.e., it achieves the same asymptotic transmit power as the optimal algorithm as the number of users in each cell tends to infinity. As a byproduct of our analysis, we characterize the optimal value of the frequency reuse factor. Simulations sustain our claims and show that substantial performance improvements are obtained when the optimal value of the frequency reuse factor is used.