Multi-cell uplink power allocation game for user minimum performance guarantee in OFDMA systems

Abstract

The multi-cell uplink power allocation problem for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA) cellular networks is investigated with the uplink transmission power allocation on each co-frequency subchannel being defined as a multi-cell non-cooperative power allocation game (MNPG). The principle of the design of the utility function is given and a novel utility function is proposed for MNPG. By using this utility function, the minimum signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) requirement of a user can be guaranteed. It can be shown that MNPG will converge to the Nash equilibrium and that this Nash equilibrium is unique. In considering the simulation results, the effect of the algorithm parameters on the system performance is discussed, and the convergence of the MNPG is verified. The performance of MNPG is compared with that of traditional power allocation schemes, the simulation results showing that the proposed algorithm increases the cell-edge user throughput greatly with only a small decrease in cell total throughput; this gives a good tradeoff between the throughput of cell-edge users and the system spectrum efficiency.