A Competitive Fair Subchannel Allocation for OFDMA System Using an Auction Algorithm

We develop a novel auction algorithm for subchannel allocation using the difference of throughput among subchannels to allow users to compete through bidding. This bidding price is calculated by the difference between the data rate of the best subchannel giving the maximum transmission rate and the second best one. Regarding this throughput difference as bidding price, the highest bidder wins the use of his best subchannel. All users try to minimize their potential loss by causing not to receive the best subchannel so they can maintain fairness by balancing the received throughput. This bidding price means the valuation or cost the user can pay for his/her subchannel with the maximum transmission rate. This is called willingness to pay in economic theory. It is the competitive fairness that a user reveals his valuation through bidding procedure and he/she is responsible for his action and its resulting data rate [1]. The algorithm we proposed can achieve a competitive fair subchannel allocation through auction mechanism. Numerical result shows that the proposed algorithm has the similar performance with sum rate maximization and guarantees fairness by minimizing user's potential throughput loss.