Distributed dynamic resource allocation for multicell SDMA packet access networks

Abstract

This paper addresses dynamic resource allocation (DRA) for the downlink of a SDMA broadband wireless packet network with multiple access ports and adaptive antennas. The main issue for distributed DRA is how to manage the intercell interference, which is very difficult to be handled in an uncoordinated environment, due to packet access and downlink beamforming. Here, we investigate the performance and the feasibility of some distributed DRA strategies to gain insight on the impact of the lack of coordination among cells. We propose to estimate the intercell interference on the basis of cell load and worst case (taking into account adaptive antennas) measured interference and implement some greedy strategies suitable for a distributed implementation. We show that the gap between random allocation (previously proposed for distributed packet allocation) and a centralized algorithm can be significantly reduced, although the implementation of an efficient distributed power control still appears a hard task.