An adaptive resource allocation in OFDMA multi-hop relay networks

Abstract

By incorporating relay technologies into cellular systems, multi-hop relay networks (MRNs) can provide higher throughput and wider coverage, but it is impossible to guarantee quality of service (QoS) requirements for users at the cell edge and in hot spots due to severe co-channel interference (CCI) and load imbalance. This paper proposes an adaptive resource allocation scheme with a joint consideration of interference coordination (IC) & load balancing (LB), and analyzes the downlink of orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based MRNs with time division duplex (TDD) mode. We present a novel frequency reuse scheme for MRNs to mitigate CCI and maintain high spectral efficiency. We also provide practical LB-based handover mechanisms to evenly distribute users and guarantee the users' QoS. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our scheme not only satisfies the requirement of coverage probability, but also improves the throughput and accommodates more users in MRNs.