QoS-Aware and Energy-Efficient Resource Management in OFDMA Femtocells

Abstract

We consider the joint resource allocation and admission control problem for Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA)-based femtocell networks. We assume that Macrocell User Equipments (MUEs) can establish connections with Femtocell Base Stations (FBSs) to mitigate the excessive cross-tier interference and achieve better throughput. A cross-layer design model is considered where multiband opportunistic scheduling at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and admission control at the network layer working at different time-scales are assumed. We assume that both MUEs and Femtocell User Equipments (FUEs) have minimum average rate constraints, which depend on their geographical locations and their application requirements. In addition, blocking probability constraints are imposed on each FUE so that the connections from MUEs only result in controllable performance degradation for FUEs. We present an optimal design for the admission control problem by using the theory of Semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP). Moreover, we devise a novel distributed femtocell power adaptation algorithm, which converges to the Nash equilibrium of a corresponding power adaptation game. This power adaptation algorithm reduces energy consumption for femtocells while still maintaining individual cell throughput by adapting the FBS power to the traffic load in the network. Finally, numerical results are presented to demonstrate the desirable operation of the optimal admission control solution, the significant performance gain of the proposed hybrid access strategy with respect to the closed access counterpart, and the great power saving gain achieved by the proposed power adaptation algorithm.