Resource Allocation for Multi-Cell Multi-Timeslot Transmission: Centralized and Distributed Algorithms

With the dramatic increase in the diverse service requirements and mobile devices, the application-specific data tends to span multiple consecutive timeslots to complete the transmission, while the demand for spectrum resources is further exacerbated. Recent works have suggested that integrating spatial frequency reuse with multi-cell networks can enhance the spectral efficiency and alleviate the scarcity of spectrum. Hence this paper considers a downlink multi-cell multi-timeslot orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) cellular system where the users keep downloading data from the base stations (BS) until reaching a predetermined cache size. Specifically, we aim to minimize the transmission delay by jointly optimizing the BS selection, subcarrier assignment, and transmit power allocation, taking into account the current cache size. Due to inter-cell interference and multi-timeslot coupling, this problem is challenging to solve directly. We prove that this problem can be transformed into sequential online sum rate maximization subproblems under causal channel state information (CSI). To solve the subproblems, we first develop a centralized dynamic resource allocation algorithm based on the parameter transformation and the majorization-minimization (MM). In view of the trade-off between performance and complexity, we further propose a distributed algorithm by a designed BS selection scheme and the MM approach. Simulation results demonstrate that the distributed algorithm achieves comparable performance to the centralized algorithm, while they both outperform the benchmark schemes in terms of transmission delay.