A Distributed Resource Allocation for Multi-Cell OFDMA Networks with User Fairness

The resource allocation with user fairness is considered for the downlink of a cellular orthogonal frequency division multi-access( OFDMA) system,in which multiple base stations are coordinated iteratively by a distributed resource allocation algorithm. In each cell,an iterative algorithm is proposed to optimize subcarrier and power allocation alternatively,while taking into consideration both the inter-cell interference and the fairness among the users. In each iteration,the subcarrier allocation is updated by user fairness,while the power allocation is updated by solving a convex optimization problem as lower bound with a distributed optimal algorithm. The effectiveness of the algorithm has been illustrated by numerical experiments. The result of simulation indicates that the proposed scheme could significantly improve the overall network throughput while maintaining fairness as compared to a conventional network with fixed transmit power spectrum.