Fair multiuser channel allocation for OFDMA networks using Nash bargaining solutions and coalitions

In this paper, a fair scheme to allocate subcarrier, rate, and power for multiuser orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access systems is proposed. The problem is to maximize the overall system rate, under each user's maximal power and minimal rate constraints, while considering the fairness among users. The approach considers a new fairness criterion, which is a generalized proportional fairness based on Nash bargaining solutions and coalitions. First, a two-user algorithm is developed to bargain subcarrier usage between two users. Then a multiuser bargaining algorithm is developed based on optimal coalition pairs among users. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithms not only provide fair resource allocation among users, but also have a comparable overall system rate with the scheme maximizing the total rate without considering fairness. They also have much higher rates than that of the scheme with max-min fairness. Moreover, the proposed iterative fast implementation has the complexity for each iteration of only O(K/sup 2/Nlog/sub 2/N+K/sup 4/), where N is the number of subcarriers and K is the number of users.