Energy-Efficient Distributed Resource Allocation With Low Overhead in Relay Cellular Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we design a resource allocation (RA) scheme for the downlink of relay-assisted orthogonal frequency division multiple access cellular networks. Our design goal is to maximize the energy efficiency (EE) with minimal signaling overhead and low computational complexity. To alleviate the signaling overhead of channel information, the proposed scheme allocates the resources in a distributed manner, where each relay station (RS) or base station (BS) individually performs a joint subchannel and power allocation for its subordinate users. To increase the cell throughput, the proposed scheme allows the subchannel reuse among RSs and this enhances the EE performance. The proposed scheme is composed of the resource allocation at RS (RS-RA) and the resource allocation at BS (BS-RA). The RS-RA is formulated as an optimization problem that minimizes the consumed power of RS while reusing as many subchannels as possible among RSs. The optimization objective of BS-RA is to maximize the EE of the cell. Simulation results show that the proposed distributed RA scheme achieves remarkably excellent EE performance with small signaling overhead, comparable with the centralized optimal RA scheme aiming at the EE maximization based on full channel information.