576
8, AUGUST 2009
Dynamic Subchannel and Slot Allocation for
OFDMA Networks Supporting Mixed Traffic:
Upper Bound and a Heuristic Algorithm
Antonis Gotsis, Student Member, IEEE, Dimitris Komnakos, and Philip Constantinou, Member, IEEE
AbstractOptimizing resource allocation over only the fre-
quency dimension in a single-cell OFDMA network is strictly
suboptimal when heterogeneous non-real-time data users coexist.
In this work we examine how to jointly exploit multi-user
diversity on frequency and time domains towards maximizing
cell throughput performance and satisfying individual rate and
fairness QoS constraints. We develop a performance upper bound
as well as an efficient heuristic algorithm for subcarrier and
slot allocation which outperforms existing algorithms under
polynomial complexity.
Index TermsMultiuser OFDM, dynamic subchannel alloca-
tion, time domain scheduling, mixed traffic.
I. I NTRODUCTION
R ADIO Resource Management mechanisms are expected
to play a key role in providing high QoS and resource
utilization in emerging OFDMA-based broadband wireless
access networks such as 3G-LTE and IEEE 802.16x [1]. These
mechanisms exploit the inherent multi-user diversity effect
by employing adaptive subchannel and bit allocation in the
frequency dimension as well as user scheduling in the time
dimension. In this work we study the problem of maximizing
the single-cell downlink throughput over an OFDMA air-
interface while supporting multiple traffic classes requiring
diverse QoS levels.
In [2] and [3] dynamic subchannel allocation and bit loading
for Best-Effort users under max-min and proportional rate
fairness constraints was studied. However, both approaches
considered only the frequency dimension, namely the pro-
posed allocation decisions were performed on a per-frame
level. This policy is both ineffective and unrealistic from a
MAC-layer perspective, since fairness is meaningful in the
long-term, that is over a time window consisting of tens
or hundreds of frames. In other words, no user scheduling
mechanism was applied. In [4] the authors studied a similar
frequency dimension optimization problem, where two classes
of users were considered: a Constant Bit Rate (CBR) class
with strict rate constraints per frame, and a Best-Effort (BE)
class with short-term proportional-rate constraints.
Manuscript received January 20, 2009. The associate editor coordinating
the review of this letter and approving it for publication was G. Ginis.
The authors are with the Mobile Radio-Communications Laboratory,
ECE School, National Technical University of Athens, 9 Heroon Polytech-
neiou Street, Zographou Campus, Attica, Greece (e-mail: {gotsis, dkomna,
fkonst}@mobile.ntua.gr).
This work is part of the 03ED184 research project, implemented within
the framework of the Reinforcement Programme of Human Research Man-
power (PENED) and co-financed by National and Community Funds (20%
from the Greek Ministry of Development-General Secretariat of Research and
Technology and 80% from the E.U.-European Social Fund).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2009.090140
1089-7798/09$25.00 
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 13, NO.
In this paper we study the same dual-class problem, but we
perform allocation decisions in the subchannel (frequency) and
slot (time) domains aiming at providing long-term fairness.
We assume uniform power loading (UPL) among system
subchannels during the subchannel allocation procedure and
then apply optimum bit/power loading for every user. This
approach is suboptimal compared to joint power/subchannels
allocation, however it is widely employed in practical OFDMA
systems like LTE due to the relaxed complexity. For further
details about UPL and its validity see [1], [5]. We first
propose an upper bound of the throughput performance which
can be acquired in reasonable execution time, and then we
devise a suboptimal yet effective heuristic subchannel and slot
allocation algorithm which outperforms existing algorithms
with polynomial time complexity.
II. P ROBLEM F ORMULATION AND A SSUMPTIONS
We assume two coexisting sets of users denoted by KCBR
and KBE . KCBR consists of K1 Constant Bit Rate (CBR)
users which generate constant rate traffic and require fixed
minimum data rates per frame denoted by Rkmin , while KBE
is formed by K2 Best-Effort (BE) users, having infinite data
for transmission and their serving data rates are proportionally
determined based on a set of normalized weights wk . Our
objective is to maximize the average cell throughput over a
T -frames window while satisfying the fixed minimum rate
and fairness constraints for each class of users1 . In addition
perfect channel knowledge of the multiuser wideband channel
is assumed at the Base Station.
Let n, k, and t be the subchannel, user and frame indices,
and n,k,t the subchannel allocation design variable taking
binary values. Assuming UPL the achieved bit rate for an
arbitrary allocation unit is rn,k,t = f 1 (Pbs /N, n,k,t ), where
Pbs is the BS power, N the number of subchannels, n,k,t the
channel-to-noise ratio, and f is a known PHY abstraction [6].
Then, the average system throughput over the predetermined
time window is given by (1a) (where K = K1 + K2 ), while
QoS (minimum rate, fairness) and system (exclusive subchan-
nel allocation) constraints by (1b) and (1c). Our aim is to find
the best subchannel allocation decision, that is to acquire the
set of {n,k,t } that maximizes Rtot subject to (1b),(1c), where
Rk is the average allocated bit-rate for a BE user k over the
N  T
whole window, namely, Rk = (1/T ) rn,k,t n,k,t .
n=1 t=1
1 The terms frame and slot will be used interchangeably through the
paper. Each frame consists of several OFDMA symbols, however channel
remains constant hence allocation decision is updated per frame, and the
symbol index may be dropped.
c 2009 IEEE
GOTSIS et al.: DYNAMIC SUBCHANNEL AND SLOT ALLOCATION FOR OFDMA NETWORKS SUPPORTING MIXED TRAFFIC
N K T
1 
Rtot = rn,k,t n,k,t (1a)
T n=1
t=1
k=1
N

rn,k,t n,k,t = Rkmin , k KCBR , t (1b)
n=1
K
 at optimizing the window-averaged QoS. Without loss of
Rk
 = wk , k KBE , n,k,t = 1 , n, t (1c)
Ri k=1
iKBE
III. A N U PPER B OUND ON THE I DEAL A LLOCATION
The direct solution of the problem stated in (1a)-(1c) is
impossible since the channel knowledge over all frames in the
start of window is required. Practically, channel knowledge is
known on a per frame basis, hence window-based optimization
corresponds to a non-causal allocation. Additionally, on a per-
frame basis, we deal with a large-scale combinatorial problem,
since subchannels cannot be shared among users. Therefore we
have to exhaustively search over all possible combinations in
 k
order
 tofind the best allocation decision. This search requires
O K N operations (typically K 10, N 100) which are
computationally infeasible to execute in reasonable time.
However given the rn,k,t values, we observe that the ob-
jective function and the minimum rate/subchannel constraint
expressions are linearly related to the design variables n,k,t .
Moreover the fairness constraint
 expression
 can be rewritten
 sumption by the CBR-class is achieved, while care is taken
as (1 wk ) Rk wk Ri = 0 for an arbitrary
iKBE ,i=k
BE user k, which is also linear w.r.t. to n,k,t . Consequently
assuming perfect knowledge of the achieved rates over the
full window, we can reform the original problem to an equiv-
alent Integer Linear Programming problem (ILP) and obtain
the optimum allocation decision based on efficient solvers
which in turn utilize advanced branch and bound/cutting plane
methods. Nevertheless there is no guarantee for acquiring
the solution of such problems due to their NP-hard nature.
Thus, we relax the subchannel-sharing constraints and we
get an LP problem which can be efficiently (polynomially)
solved through Interior-Point methods. The relaxed LP prob-
lem matrix formulation is x = arg max cT x s.t. bL 
x However, since tight fairness is not guaranteed by the above
N KT 1
Ax  bU , xi I = [0, 1], where x I stands for
the subchannel allocation vector over all frames (like n,k,t
variables above), c RN KT 1 expresses the corresponding
coefficient vector, and bL , bU R(T N +T K1 +K2 )1 , A
R(T N +T K1 +K2 )(N KT ) the system and QoS constraints.
Based on the appropriate indexing transformations we can
devise the final matrix expressions, which are omitted due
577
IV. A H EURISTIC A LLOCATION A LGORITHM
We now devise a heuristic algorithm that attempts to pro-
vide high cell-throughput performance under minimum rate
and fairness QoS constraints, by jointly allocating time and
frequency resources. Our approach works on a per-frame
basis without using future channel knowledge, however targets
generality max-min fairness over BE-class users is targeted.
Let t be an arbitrary frame over a T -frames window, t [1, T ],
S the available subchannels set, rk,t and Rk,t the average
achieved and actual allocated bit-rates over all subchannels
 
N t1
for the k th user so far, namely, rk,t = (1/t) rn,k,i ,
n=1 i=1
 
N t1
Rk,t = (1/t) n,k,i rn,k,i . Since tight per-frame
n=1 i=1
minimum rate constraints are imposed we first handle CBR-
class allocation. Specifically, we iteratively select a user-
subchannel combination  and perform the corresponding
al-
location picking k = k KCBR : arg min rk,t and n =

arg min rarg max{rn,k ,t },k,t until all CBR rate con-
n kK nS
BE
straints are satisfied. This selection criterion implies that at
each iteration the worst on-average CBR user is allocated
its best subchannel that is simultaneously the worst over
the BE-class users set. Therefore, minimum resources con-
about minimizing the utilization of good BE subchannels.
In terms of computational complexity we need at most N
allocation steps, each one demanding K operations for finding
the selected user and N K operations for finding the selected
subchannel, thus totally O(N 2 K + N K).
Next we proceed to an iterative BE-class subchannel alloca-
tion procedure over the remaining set S if it is non-empty, else
we proceed to frame t + 1. In order to balance cell-throughput
maximization and possible user(s) starvation, we apply a
first degree of fairness by allocating to the BE users their
best subchannelsrelative to their average performance rk,t ,
that is (n , k ) = n S, k KBE : arg max (rn,k,t /rk,t ) .
n,k
criterion, we perform the above allocation on condition that
the normalized maximum rate difference between the best
and the worst users (after the new allocation) in terms of
actual average throughput performance is not violated. This
is mathematically expressed in (2), where the denominator
tightens the long-term fairness constraint as we approach the
end of the window2 .
to lack of space.  


We have to emphasize that cT x is an upper bound of
the actual achievable cell-throughput performance due to the
need of future channel knowledge and integrality relaxation.
In order to distinguish it from the optimum implementable
allocation we name it as IDEAL. Finally, if only frequency
dimension optimization is considered, namely, each frame
allocation is performed independently from the other, we can
utilize the same expressions by simply setting T = 1. The
specific solution, named as OPT-FRAME corresponds to an
upper bound of [2] or any other UPL-based heuristic approach.
Gt = max Rk,t min Rk,t / (a (T t))  (2)
If (2) does not hold, the selected user is temporarily excluded
from the BE candidate users list and the procedure is repeated
for the rest users. At the end of the window rate difference has
converged to a minimal value, ensuring BE users rate fairness.
The complexity cost of BE allocation is estimated as O(N 2 K)
2 is close to unity, a is a tracking parameter used for controlling
throughput/fairness trade-off over time. Its optimal setting and impact on
performance is beyond the scope of this paper.
578 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 13, NO. 8, AUGUST 2009

5.5
rithms, YU-FRAME [4] and MAXMIN-FRAME [2]. The
5
(I)LP solutions are extracted through CPLEX/TOMLAB [8].
We also show indicative results for a single-class scenario
Cell Throughput (bits/symbol)

4.5 considering only BE users (K1 = 0, K2 = 10).

Fig. 1 depicts the average performance of both upper
4 bounds, namely window- and frame-based optimization for
T = 50 Tf . For the mixed-traffic scenario we observe a
3.5
12% performance gain of the IDEAL scheme compared to
3 T=50Tf
OPT-FRAME at low SNR and 8% gain averaged over all
IDEAL (CBR/BE)
SNR conditions. When only BE users are considered the gain
2.5 OPTFRAME (CBR/BE) increases to 15% at low SNR and 9% on average. Intuitively
IDEAL (BEonly)
OPTFRAME (BEonly)
for the only-BE-users scenario subchannel allocation becomes
2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
more flexible due to the non-existence of strict rate con-
Pnorm
bs
straints. Next in Fig. 2 we compare the average cell-throughput
performance of our algorithm with the other schemes by
Fig. 1. Upper bounds performance for single- and mixed-traffic conditions. illustrating the corresponding performance losses from IDEAL
allocation (mixed-traffic scenario and various window sizes
20
HEUR are examined). We observe that our algorithm outperforms
18
T=10Tf OPTFRAME
YUFRAME existing per-frame heuristic schemes for all window sizes.
Cell Throughput Loss from IDEAL (%)

T=30Tf
T=50Tf
MAXMINFRAME
HEUR For T = 50 Tf HEUR outperforms YU by 7.2% at low
16 OPTFRAME
YUFRAME SNR (4.8% on average) and MAXMIN by 9.2% at low SNR
14
MAXMINFRAME
HEUR (7.2% on average), while it is even better than the per-frame
OPTFRAME
YUFRAME upper bound (1.3 2.2%). Compared to the IDEAL yet non-
12 MAXMINFRAME
feasible allocation, the loss of our approach varies from 3.7
10 9.2% (5.6% on average). Only at T = 10 Tf , the per-frame
8
upper-bound is better than ours due to the reduced temporal
exploitation gain.
6

4 VI. C ONCLUSIONS
2 The problem of cell-throughput maximization under het-
1 2 3 4
Fig. 2. Comparative performance of different schemes for various T sizes.
since we need at most N iterations, each one costing N K op-
erations for finding the best user/subchannel pair. Adding the
complexity of K single-user bit-loading procedures according
to [6], we acquire the aggregate algorithmic complexity, as
O(N 2 K) which is comparable to [4] and higher than [2].
V. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
We consider a DL single-cell OFDMA system consisting
of N = 125 subchannels, K1 = 4 CBR users requiring
Rkmin = 36 bits/OFDMA symbol and K2 = 6 BE users
with equalized weights wk uniformly spread over the cell area.
Each subchannel can be loaded up to rmax = 6 bits/symbol,
and each OFDMA frame lasts for Tf = 5 ms. We examine
various window sizes T = {10, 20, . . . , 50}Tf while we vary
norm norm
the available BS power through Pbs (Pbs expresses the
ratio of actual BS power to the minimum needed Tx power
to satisfy the CBR constraints). We simulate 10 independent
system realizations, each one comprising 500 frames and adopt
a 25 MHz bad-urban NLOS macro-cell pedestrian (3 km/hr)
channel model [7]. For each scenario we have simulated the
two upper bounds presented in Sec.III, namely IDEAL and
OPT-FRAME, the devised window-based heuristic algo-
rithm of Sec.IV (HEUR), and two existing per-frame algo-
5
Pnorm
6 7 8 9 10
erogeneous minimum rate and fairness constraints for the DL
bs
of a single-cell OFDMA network was examined. An upper
bound was first devised based on a LP reformulation and then
a heuristic algorithm was developed that outperformed existing
approaches from the literature. We showed that optimizing
resource allocation over both time and frequency dimensions
through subchannel allocation and user/slot scheduling en-
hances system performance.
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