Block-level resource allocation with limited feedback in multicell cellular networks

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the scheduling and power allocation for coordinated multi-point transmission in downlink long term evolution advanced (LTE-A) systems, where orthogonal frequency division multiple-access is used. The proposed scheme jointly optimizes user selection, power allocation, and modulation and coding scheme (MCS) selection to maximize the weighted sum throughput with fairness consideration. Considering practical constraints in LTE-A systems, the MCSs for the resource blocks assigned to the same user need to be the same. Since the optimization problemis a combinatorial and non-convex one with high complexity, a low-complexity algorithm is proposed by separating the user selection and power allocation into two subproblems. To further simplify the optimization problem for power allocation, the instantaneous signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and the average SINR are adopted to allocate power in a single cell and multiple coordinated cells, respectively. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the average system throughput and the cell-edge user throughput significantly compared with the existing schemes with limited feedback.