Fairness aware chunk-based resource allocation in multi-cell OFDMA networks

Abstract

Resource allocation (RA) in multi-cell OFDMA systems is very important for maximizing system throughput. Although sub-channel RA is optimal in terms of system throughput, more interest is given to chunk-based RA so as to simplify allocation algorithms and minimize required signalling. In this paper, we propose a fairness-aware chunk-based RA algorithm for the downlink transmission of multi-cell OFDMA system with fractional frequency reuse (FFR) adoption. Simulation results reveal that our proposed algorithm outperforms two reference algorithms in literature in terms of some system metrics such as average system spectral efficiency (SE), users fairness and rates of cell-edge users.