Distributed and Autonomous Resource and Power Allocation for Wireless Networks

In this paper, a distributed and autonomous technique for resource and power allocation in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) femto-cellular networks is presented. Here, resource blocks (RBs) and their corresponding transmit powers are assigned to the user(s) in each cell individually without explicit coordination between femto-base stations (FBSs). The “allocatability” of each resource is determined utilising only locally available information of the following quantities: the required rate of the user; the quality (i.e., strength) of the desired signal; the frequency-selective fading on each RB; and the level of interference incident on each RB. Using a fuzzy logic system, the time-averaged values of each of these inputs are combined to determine which RBs are most suitable to be allocated in a particular cell, i.e., which resources can be allocated such that the user requested rate(s) in that cell are satisfied. Fuzzy logic presents a completely novel, low-complexity methodology for inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC). A comprehensive study of this system in a femtocell environment is performed, yielding system performance improvements in terms of throughput, energy efficiency and coverage over state-of-the-art ICIC techniques.