Energy-efficient power allocation for multicarrier systems with delay-outage probability constraints

This paper presents an optimal energy-efficient power allocation scheme for a point-to-point multicarrier link over frequency-selective fading channel subject to a delay-outage probability constraint. For a target delay-outage limit, the energy efficiency (EE) objective function is formulated as the ratio of the achieved link effective capacity to the total expenditure power, expressed in units of b/J/Hz. We first prove that this objective function is quasi-concave in the transmission power, and, hence, the global maximum solution of the underlying optimization problem can be obtained using fractional programming. Subsequently, we develop a two-step optimal power allocation algorithm by first obtaining the average sum power level corresponding to the maximum achievable EE, followed by jointly distributing this obtained average power over time and frequency. Analytical results show that the EE-based power allocation has a structure similar to that of the QoS-driven spectral-efficient scheme, but with a different cut-off threshold below which no transmission power is allocated. Simulation results show that the proposed joint optimal power allocation scheme provides significant EE gains over the simple independent subcarrier optimization scheme, where these performance advantages become more pronounced with tighter delay constraints and in fading channels with more severe frequency selectivity.