Power-Efficient Transmission for User-Centric Networks With Limited Fronthaul Capacity and Computation Resource

Abstract

With the rapid development of cloud computing, the user-centric networks with the baseband unit pool have attracted a great deal of attentions in academic and industrial fields. However, limited fronthaul capacity and computation resource have become the bottlenecks inevitably. Thus, this paper investigates the power-efficient transmission in user-centric networks by considering both fronthaul capacity and computation resource constraints, where multiple access points (APs) and user equipments (UEs) are distributed. Specifically, a joint optimization of the beamforming vectors, AP-UE association strategy and transmission time is proposed to minimize the total power consumption (TPC). The formulated mixed integer non-linear problem (MINLP) is NP-hard. To address this problem, the MINLP is first transformed into a convex one via the successive convex approximation and semidefinite relaxation methods. Then, an iterative but effective algorithm is designed by using the property of the solution and applying the Lagrangian dual method. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm converges rapidly and outperforms benchmark algorithms in terms of TPC.