Thesis for Master’s Degree

QoS Aware Subcarrier and Power Allocation

in OFDMA Systems
for Broadband Wireless Applications

Mohmmad Anas

Department of Information and Communications

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

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2005
 QoS Aware Subcarrier and Power Allocation
in OFDMA Systems
for Broadband Wireless Applications

Advisor: Kiseon Kim

by

Mohmmad Anas

Department of Information and Communications

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

A thesis submitted to the faculty of the Gwangju Institute of Science

and Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Master of Science in the Department of Information and Communi-
cations

Gwangju, Korea
December 9, 2004
Approved by

Professor Kiseon Kim

Thesis Advisor
QoS Aware Subcarrier and Power Allocation
in OFDMA Systems
for Broadband Wireless Applications

Mohmmad Anas

Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

degree of Master of Science

December 9, 2004

Thesis Advisor
Prof. Kiseon Kim

Committee Member
Prof. Shalom Raz

Committee Member
Prof. Dong Soo Har
 To my family and friends

for their invaluable love and support

MS/IC Mohmmad Anas. QoS Aware Subcarrier and Power Allocation in OFDMA
20034134 Systems for Broadband Wireless Applications. Department of Information
and Communications. 2005. 82p. Advisor: Prof. Kiseon Kim.

Abstract

Wireless broadband technologies are anticipated to flourish in the next few years,
due to the increasing demand for wireless connectivity and the need to support en-
hanced services and applications in local or wide area environments. The primary goal
in a communications system is Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning, which is synony-
mous to achieving an acceptable data transmission rate, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
or bit error rate (BER). Considering recent proposals for wide band multimedia ser-
vices with the existing spectrum allocations shows that spectrum resource management
remains an important topic in the near and distant future.
Using the essential feature of channel orthogonality as a baseline, our approach
places emphasis on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), which
is an emerging modulation and multiple access method for next generation (NextG)
wireless broadband communication systems. The basic question which we tried an-
swering in this thesis is how to allocate subcarrier and power to provide broadband
wireless services to heterogeneous users differentiated on the basis of required QoS.
Since, the joint optimization problem of allocating subcarrier and power optimally to
satisfy user-level QoS (required data rate and BER) under the total available power
constraint, involves discrete assignment and is thus not convex in the unknowns of
subcarrier allocation and the available power, making it a NP-hard problem. As this
problem is NP-hard and exhaustive search over all possible allocations is impractical
for large scale systems, most efforts in literature focus on developing efficient heuristic
algorithms which may provide optimal solutions for simple networks or special cases

–i–
algorithms which may provide optimal solutions for simple networks or special cases
but are suboptimal in general. However, if subcarrier allocation is known, the optimiza-
tion problem has a closed form solution and can be solved using canonical algorithms.
Following this strategy we propose a decoupled subcarrier and power allocation algo-
rithm to provide service to heterogeneous users. We further divide the optimal power
allocation solution and present a computationally efficient suboptimal algorithm for
combined Guaranteed Performance (GP) and Best Effort (BE) users which allocates
power according to QoS. Our suboptimal algorithm consists of two stages. First, the
power is allocated to GP users following optimal waterfilling strategy. Then, the re-
maining power is equally distributed among the subcarriers allocated to BE users.
Simulation results quantify the performance of these techniques and provide design
guidelines for realistic systems.

c
°2005
Mohmmad Anas
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

– ii –
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– iv –
 Acknowledgements

The thesis is the result of two challenging years of study and research. I would like to

express my gratitude to many people who have enriched not only my research experi-

ence, but also this important period in my life.

As somebody said that graduate school advisor is not just an advisor for the dura-

tion of graduate study but is “an advisor for life”. First of all, I would like to express

my sincere thanks to my thesis advisor, Professor Kiseon Kim, for his continuous sup-

port, guidance and encouragement during the entire course of my MS studies, and

would like to thank him in advance for all his future advice. I would also like to thank

my thesis committee: Professors Shalom Raz and Dong Soo Har not only for their

evaluation of this thesis, but also for the thoroughness and enthusiasm. Furthermore, I

would like to thank affiliated faculty members of Multimedia Communication Systems

Laboratory: Professors R. C. Jain, Georgy Shevlyakov, and Alex Bahrushin for their

invaluable comments during the regular Lab Progress Report Workshops.

I must also acknowledge the help and support of fellow students and friends. The

fellow and former members of Multimedia Communication Systems Laboratory have

created an environment that was friendly and inspiring. Discussions in the office were

very helpful in bringing fresh ideas to the work. I would specially like to acknowledge

the friendship, support, collaboration and precious experiences of Changho Yun, Chiho

Lee, Dujeong Choi, Gwangzeen Ko, Hyunduk Kang, Insoo Koo, Jeungmin Joo, Jintae

Park, Kanghee Kim, Kwang Park, Miheung Choe, Seokjin Sung, Seokjoo Shin, Seungho

Bae, Suwon Lee, Taesik Cho, Yeomin Yoon, and Younghyun Kim; and Seok Woo

–v–
for translating the thesis abstract in Korean language. The picture is not complete

without the special mention of Jisang You, who prefer to be called khan-hyung-nim,

and Youngwook Lee, cherished friends, who have also made up a major part of my

daily life, with whom I shared the entire journey towards our MS degrees. I would

also like to thank Wooyoung Chon for her hospitality and gentle care. There are of

course many more names, too many to distinguish individually. So I thank all of

them for two great years: Eunchan Kim, Hongku Kang, Hyunho Yang, Jeoungrok

Yang, Seokhun Cho, Sungdon Moon, Wooncheol Hwang, Youngsam Kim, Youngsun

Kim, and Younsuk Koh. I would also thank my friends in the department and in the

school: Akhlaq, Amit, Fahad, Farhan, Gopinath, Hee-Sun, Kwan-Jung, Naveen, Omar,

Puneeth, Sooraj, Usman, and Young-Suk.

I am thankful for the excellent research supports provided by the Korea Science

and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) from Ministry of Science and Technology, and

Brain Korea 21 (BK21) from Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development,

Korea.

Finally, I would like to thank my family and relatives, whose love, support and

encouragement have accompanied me throughout my life. They supported me in every

possible way and in every single moment during these years and they were always

beside me although they were so many thousand miles away. Words alone can never

express my gratitude.

– vi –
 Contents

Abstract (English) i

Abstract (Korean) iii

Acknowledgements v
List of Contents vii
List of Tables ix
List of Figures x

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Research Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Research Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Thesis Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2 OFDMA System for Broadband Wireless Applications 8

2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2 Channel for Broadband Wireless Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.1 Channel Fading Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.2 Tapped Delay Line Channel Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3 OFDM/OFDMA System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3.1 OFDM Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3.2 OFDMA System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4 Broadband Wireless Traffic Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.5 Resource Allocation Issues in OFDMA Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.5.1 QoS Aware Resource Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.5.2 Subcarrier and Power Allocation for Heterogeneous Users . . . . 25
2.6 Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

3 QoS Aware Subcarrier Allocation for Heterogeneous users in OFDMA

System 28
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.2 Problem Formulation for Subcarrier Allocation in OFDMA System . . 35

– vii –
 3.3 Subcarrier Allocation for Dual-Service Provisioning in OFDMA System 37
3.3.1 Hungarian Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3.2 Proposed Subcarrier Allocation Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.4 Simulation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

4 QoS Aware Power Allocation for Combined Guaranteed Performance

and Best Effort Users in OFDMA System 50
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.2 Problem Formulation for Power Allocation in OFDMA System . . . . . 53
4.3 Power Allocation for Dual-Service Provisioning in OFDMA System . . 57
4.3.1 Optimal Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.3.2 Proposed Power Allocation for Known Subcarrier Assignment . 59
4.4 Simulation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

5 Conclusions and Further Works 70

5.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.2 Further Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Abbreviations 74

References 77

– viii –
 List of Tables

4.1 Traffic profile used in simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

– ix –
 List of Figures

1.1 Current and future mobile systems. The general trend will be to provide

higher data rates and greater mobility. Derived from [30], [4] . . . . . . 2

2.1 A mobile user receiving two reflected rays that have the same path distance 10

2.2 Tapped delay line (TDL) channel model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.3 Single-user OFDM transmitter and receiver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.4 Spectrum of each subchannel in OFDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2.5 System model of a downlink OFDMA system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

3.1 Proposed-EQ (EQ stands for EQual power): proposed subcarrier alloca-

tion algorithm to provide service to combined GP and BE users . . . . 42

3.2 Sum capacity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method used in

Rhee et al. vs. WSNR. K = 4, N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB . . . . . . . . . . . 44

3.3 min-user’s capacity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method used

in Rhee et al. vs. WSNR. K = 4, N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB . . . . . . . . . 45

3.4 Sum capacity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method used in

Rhee et al. vs. user number. N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB, WSNR = 38 dB . . 46

3.5 min-user’s capacity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method used

in Rhee et al. vs. user number. N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB, WSNR = 38 dB 47

3.6 Computational complexity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method

used in Rhee et al. vs. user number. N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB, WSNR = 38 dB 48

–x–
4.1 Flowchart of the proposed-RA (RA stands for Resource Allocation) al-

gorithm to provide service to combined GP and BE users . . . . . . . . 61

4.2 Capacity in OFDMA system vs. number of users . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

4.3 Capacity gain over TDMA vs. number of users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

4.4 Example capacity performance comparison between proposed-EQ (figure

above) and proposed-RA (figure below) for different user index. (a) K =

4, (b) K = 8, (c) K = 12, (d) K = 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

4.5 min-user’s capacity of GP and BE users vs. number of users . . . . . . 67

– xi –
Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Wireless communications has emerged as one of the largest sectors of the telecom-

munications industry, evolving from a niche business in the last decade to one of the

most promising areas for growth in the 21st century [1]. The need for ubiquitous cov-

erage and connectivity in all kinds of environment and the increasing user demand for

mobility, flexibility and ease of system deployment have necessitated wireless access.

Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) is considered as a standard for next generation

(NextG) communication systems providing flexible and easy deployment solution for

high-speed communications over a wireless channel [2].

Vector Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (VOFDM) is considered as a

base setting for BWA systems by the Broadband Wireless Internet Forum (BWIF),

one of the programs of IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-

ISTO). Presently IEEE 802.16 issued standards for the physical (PHY) and medium

access control (MAC) layers of systems in the 10-66 GHz band, generally known as

Local Multipoint Distribution Service (LMDS), and IEEE 802.16a group was formed

to develop standards to operate in the 2-11 GHz band in which channel impairments,

–1–
 Vehicular
4G systems
5G systems
(2012)
(2020)
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3G systems (2006)

Pedestrian (2003)

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(2002)
0.03 0.1 0.3 1 3 10 30 100
Date Rate (Mbps)

Figure 1.1: Current and future mobile systems. The general trend will be to provide

higher data rates and greater mobility. Derived from [30], [4]

multipath fading and path loss become more significant with the increase in the number

of subcarriers [3]. Another recent development is WiBro also known as High-Speed

Portable internet (HPi) is a Korean technology for NextG communication systems

based on IEEE 802.16a/d to be available commercially by 2006 [4].

The ability to support high data rates for broadband wireless applications depends

drastically on the availability and aggressive reuse of radio spectrum in all locations, as

well as the use of efficient multiple access and signalling schemes. Intensive spectrum

reuse guarantees achievability of high transmission rates, while appropriate multiple

access techniques lead to efficient and flexible resource sharing and mitigate the ef-

fect of wireless channel impairments on system capacity [11]. Orthogonal Frequency

Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) has been proposed as the multiple access scheme

for several NextG wireless standards, as a means of achieving high data rates. In

–2–
OFDMA, the available spectrum is divided into multiple orthogonal narrowband sub-

channels (subcarriers) and information symbols are transmitted in parallel over these

low rate subchannels. This method results in reduced intersymbol interference (ISI)

and multipath delay spread and thus improvement in capacity and attainable data

rates.

Independently of the employed multiple access scheme, the foremost goal of a NextG

communication system is to provide heterogeneous services with diverse Quality of

Service (QoS) requirements [12], which is synonymous to achieving an acceptable data

transmission rate, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or bit error rate (BER). However, wireless

channel impairment and users imposes certain constraints on achievability of data rates

and BER requirements. Identifying the performance limits of resource allocation with

the objective to satisfy all users QoS requirements under the dynamicity of the wireless

medium is therefore a challenging problem.

Recent studies [14], [15], [16], [17], [19], [20] on resource (subcarrier and power) allo-

cation for the multiuser Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system

demonstrate that a significant performance gain can be obtained leveraging multiuser

diversity assuming knowledge of instantaneous channel gains for all users at the trans-

mitter. It was shown in [17] that data rate of a multiuser OFDM system is maximized

when each subcarrier is assigned to only one user with the best channel gain for that

subcarrier and the transmit power is distributed over the subcarriers according to the

water-filling policy [21]. In addition to the system capacity maximization or transmit

power minimization, sometimes depending on the application it becomes imperative to

–3–
investigate the methods to provide user-level QoS or individual QoS (iQoS) support.

Thus in this thesis, we mainly study and investigate the subcarrier and power allo-

cation algorithms to provide user-level QoS support in OFDMA systems for broadband

wireless applications.

1.2 Research Objectives

The underlying philosophy in the problems that are considered in this thesis is

how to provide high data rate, and to provide a wider range of services, such as voice

communications, videophones, and high speed internet access over scarce and unpre-

dictable wireless channel. To achieve higher data rates and support diverse applications

in NextG wireless communication systems it becomes imperative to improve the spec-

tral efficiency and to use available resources efficiently. This significant improvement

in spectral efficiency can only be achieved by significant advances in multiple aspects

of cellular communication systems, such as network structure, network management,

smart antennas, RF modulation, user allocation, and resource allocation.

Resource (channel, total available power) allocation is viewed as an integral part of

multiple access that is performed at the MAC layer. Depending on the multiple access

scheme, channel can be time slot, carrier frequencies or codes. If the set of users is

given, an efficient channel allocation algorithm should try to minimize the number of

channels needed to accomodate users and guarantee acceptable link quality for them.

By minimizing the number of required channels at any time instant, the system can

respond better to a potential sudden load increase or link quality deterioration. Hence,

–4–
the likelihood of blocking a user is minimized. When the number of available channel is

provided, the objective of the of channel allocation is to maximize the system capacity,

i.e., the number of accommodated users with acceptable link quality. If users have

different rate requirements and need additional channels, the objective becomes to

maximize the total achievable rate of users in the system.

In this thesis, we address resource allocation issues in the context of multiple access

schemes with orthogonal channels. Using the essential feature of channel orthogonality

as a baseline, our approach places an emphasis on OFDMA, which presents some novel

challenges in resource allocation and provides additional flexibility in adapting trans-

mission to varying channel conditions. The basic question which we tried answering in

this thesis is how to allocate subcarrier and power to provide broadband wireless ser-

vices to heterogeneous users differentiated on the basis of required QoS. Since, the joint

optimization problem of allocating subcarrier and power optimally to satisfy user-level

QoS (required data rate and BER) under the total available power constraint, involves

discrete assignment and is thus not convex in the unknowns of subcarrier allocation and

the available power, making it a NP-hard problem [25]. As this problem is NP-hard

and exhaustive search over all possible allocations is impractical for large scale sys-

tems, most efforts in literature focus on developing efficient heuristic algorithms which

may provide optimal solutions for simple networks or special cases but are suboptimal

in general [32]. However, if subcarrier allocation is known, the optimization problem

has a closed form solution and can be solved using canonical algorithms. Following

this strategy we decouple our problem into subcarrier allocation and power allocation

–5–
to provide service to heterogeneous users. We further decouple the optimal power al-

location solution and present a computationally efficient suboptimal algorithm which

allocates power according to the QoS requirements.

1.3 Thesis Organization

The problems that are considered in this thesis are organized as follows:

In Chapter 2, we present an overview of OFDMA based BWA system. Firstly,

we describe the OFDMA system model referenced throughout this thesis. Further we

explain the channel and traffic model assumed. Later in this chapter we study the

resource allocation issues in OFDMA based systems to be tackled in following chapters

of the thesis.

In Chapter 3, we focus on subcarrier allocation algorithms to provide service to

heterogenous users differentiated on the basis of QoS in OFDMA system. We con-

sider the case of maximizing the system capacity while satisfying the QoS criterion

of each user using Hungarian Algorithm, further we consider the case of maximizing

the minimum user’s capacity using method in Rhee et al. [15]. Next, we extend the

method used in Rhee et al. and propose an algorithm to provide service to heteroge-

neous users differentiated on the basis of QoS and we refer to it as proposed-EQ (EQ

stands for EQual power allocation). We assume that total power is allocated equally

among all the subcarriers. Simulation results illustrate the comparative performance

of Hungarian Algorithm and Method in Rhee et al.

In Chapter 4, we study the problem of power allocation for combined Guaranteed

–6–
Performance (GP) and Best Effort (BE) users in OFDMA system. In the first part

of this chapter, we review the system model and formulate optimization problem to

support heterogeneous users (GP and BE users) under total power constraints. Next,

we present an analytical framework for optimal power allocation and we further propose

a reduced complexity suboptimal algorithm. Our suboptimal algorithm consists of two

stages. First, the power is allocated to GP users following optimal waterfilling strategy.

Then, the remaining power is equally distributed among the subcarriers allocated to

BE users. Simulation results quantify the performance of these techniques and provide

design guidelines for realistic systems.

In Chapter 5, we summarize the contributions of this thesis and present some

directions of future study.

–7–
Chapter 2

OFDMA System for Broadband Wireless

Applications

2.1 Introduction

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) has been proposed as

the modulation and multiple access method for several NextG Wireless standards, as a

means of achieving high data rates. OFDMA is an extension of Orthogonal Frequency

Division Multiplexing (OFDM), which is currently the modulation choice for high speed

data access systems such as IEEE 802.11a/g and ETSI HiperLAN/2 standards for

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) [5], [6], [7] as well as the digital audio/video

broadcasting (DAB/DVB) standards [8], [9] in Europe. It has also been proposed by

IEEE 802.15 and IEEE 802.16 working groups for Wireless Personal Area Networks

(WPANs) and fixed Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) [3] respectively. OFDM is

based on the principal of multi-carrier transmission, also known as Discrete Multi-Tone

(DMT), which was applied earlier in high bit-rate Digital Subscriber Lines (DSLs).

In OFDM, the wideband spectrum is divided into orthogonal narrowband subcar-

riers as in frequency division multiplexing. The bit stream is split into subsets, each of

–8–
which constitutes a subsymbol. Each subsymbol modulates a different subcarrier and

several subsymbols of a user are transmitted in parallel over these low rate subcarriers.

Modulation and demodulation of subcarriers during transmission and reception are im-

plemented with Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT) and DFT respectively. The

orthogonality of signals in different subcarriers is preserved by appropriate selection of

frequency spacing between the subcarriers. Due to this orthogonality, the signals are

separated at the receiver.

In this chapter, we briefly reviewed the channel fading characteristics and then

we present a practical channel model i.e., tapped delay line channel model, used for

broadband wireless applications [10]. Since, OFDMA is based on OFDM we mathe-

matically discussed the single-user OFDM transmitter and receiver structure. Next, we

developed a mathematical model for OFDMA system to be referenced throughout this

thesis. Later, traffic model for providing heterogeneous services is discussed and finally,

the resource allocation issues in OFDMA based systems to provide NextG broadband

wireless services are studied.

2.2 Channel for Broadband Wireless Applications

An important requirement for assessing technology for Broadband wireless appli-

cations is to have an accurate description of the wireless channel. Channel models

are heavily dependent upon the radio architecture. For example, in first generation

systems, a super-cell or “single-stick” architecture is used where Base Station (BS)

and the subscriber station are in Line-of-Sight (LOS) condition and the system uses a

–9–
Figure 2.1: A mobile user receiving two reflected rays that have the same path distance

single cell with no co-channel interference. For second generation systems a scalable

multi-cell architecture with Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) conditions becomes necessary

[10]. In the following subsections various channel fading characteristics are explained

in brief and a tapped delay line (TDL) channel model is explained, which is further

used in the simulations.

2.2.1 Channel Fading Characteristics

The inherent volatility of the wireless medium constitutes the major difficulty in

the design of wireless networks. The quality of wireless link between a transmitter and

receiver depends on radio propagation parameters (path loss, shadowing, multipath

fading) and cochannel interference. Path loss stems from wave propagation attenuation

in free space. Shadowing is caused by large obstacles such as buildings and the incurred

loss is modeled as a lognormal distributed random variable. Mutipath fading arises due

to the additive and subtractive effect of delays and amplitudes from multiple paths.

– 10 –
 The time-varying nature of these factors due to transmitter or receiver mobility and

movement of the surrounding objects causes the quality of a narrowband wireless link

fluctuate in time. On the other hand, a broadband wireless link is characterized both by

time-varying behavior due to the aforementioned factors and by frequency selectivity

caused by the multipath propagation and delay spread. The frequency selectivity can

lead to ISI and thus significantly degrade the link quality.

In the following subsection we study the Tapped Delay Line (TDL) channel model

which effectively models multipath channel but is somehow ineffective to deal with the

channels like frequency dispersive channels which lead to frequency offset among the

received spectrum. This problem is effectively dealt using the frequency equalization

used at the receiver side in actual systems. In the simulations performed we assume

that complete channel state information (CSI) is known at the receiver, in a way we

assume that complete frequency estimation is well done and frequency equalization is

not necessary.

2.2.2 Tapped Delay Line Channel Model

In the wireless communication environments, there exist a number of different paths

between the transmitter and the receiver due to the reflection and scattering of the

radio waves. If the time difference between the time delays of the paths is smaller

than the reciprocal of the transmitted signal bandwidth, the receiver sees only the

superposition of the arriving signals without distinguishing several paths [33]. In other

words, the paths with approximately same delays are combined together and regarded

– 11 –
 s(t)
τ0 τ1 − τ 0 τ 2 − τ1 τ L−1 − τ L− 2

d0 d1 d2 dL-1

r(t)

Figure 2.2: Tapped delay line (TDL) channel model

as one path in the receiver. Consequently, the multipath channel is often represented

by a TDL channel model with a finite number of paths. The two-path model is the

simplest form of the TDL model which is composed of a direct path and one dominant

delayed path. By approximating the multiple paths as a finite number of L distinct

paths, the impulse response for the radio channel can be represented by a weighted

sum of delayed delta functions:

L−1
X
h(t) = dl δ(t − τl ) (2.1)
l=0

which is the well-known TDL channel model shown in Figure 2.2. The corresponding

frequency response, or the channel transfer function at the radian frequency ω is given

by
L−1
X
H(ω) = dl e−jωτl . (2.2)
l=0

Due to scattering of each wave in the vicinity of a moving mobile, each tap coefficient

dl results from the vectorial sum of the multipath components with approximately the

same delay. As a result of high phase variations of such components, the amplitude

– 12 –
and phase of each tap vary rapidly.

Several statistical distributions have been studied and applied to describe the fast

variations of the signal amplitude. If a significant number of multipath components

with approximately equal power are present in a time bin, the time-varying fading of

the path amplitude is well described by a Rayleigh distribution varying according to a

classical Doppler spectrum:

1
S(f ) ∝ p (2.3)
1 − (f /fD )2

where fD = υ/λ is the maximum Doppler shift, a function of the mobile speed υ and

the wavelength λ. On the other hand, when there is a stronger path in a time bin, the

amplitude fading follows a Rice distribution.

In some cases a strong direct wave or specular reflection exists which gives rise to

a non-fading path, then the Doppler spectrum is:

S(f ) = δ(fs ) (2.4)

where fs is the Doppler frequency of the direct path, given by its direction relative to

the mobile direction of movement.

In addition to the multipath fading (the small-scale fading), the effect of shadowing

(the large-scale fading) and pathloss can also be included in the channel model. There-

fore, the complete characterization of time-varying channel impulse response h(t, τ ) is

given by
L−1
X
p
h(t, τ ) = Gσ(t) dl (t)δ(t − τl ) (2.5)
l=0

– 13 –
where, G is the pathloss, σ(t) denotes time-varying shadowing, L is the number of

paths in the multipath and dl (t), τl are the time-varying gain and time delay for the

lth path. The transmitted signal is

s(t) = x(t)ej2πfc t (2.6)

where, fc is the carrier frequency and x(t) is the complex baseband signal. This is

expressed as,
+∞
X
x(t) = b(i)g(t − iT ) (2.7)
i=−∞

where, {bi }+∞

−∞ is the symbol sequence, T is the symbol duration and g(.) is the pulse

shaping waveform. The signal at the receiver input is

Z
r(t) = s(t − τ )h(t, τ )dτ + η̃(t) (2.8)

where, η̃(t) is the receiver noise process.

2.3 OFDM/OFDMA System Model

OFDMA is a combination of modulation scheme that resembles OFDM and a multi-

ple access scheme that combine Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and Frequency

Division Multiple Access (FDMA). Since it is important to study OFDM to have a com-

plete understanding of OFDMA. Hence, in the following subsections we will study the

basic OFDM/OFDMA system model to be referenced throughout this thesis.

2.3.1 OFDM Overview

OFDM is a parallel transmission scheme using multiple subcarriers. The basic

principle of OFDM is to convert a high-speed serial data stream into a number of

– 14 –
 Channel State Information

Adaptive Modulator 1

bit stream Serial Adaptive Modulator 2 Cyclic D/A Baseband

to IDFT
Prefix to RF
Parallel
Adaptive Modulator N

Channel

Channel State Information

Frequency
Remove Parallel bits out
RF to Domain Detection
A/D Cyclic IDFT to
Baseband Equalization
Prefix Serial
(FEQ)

Figure 2.3: Single-user OFDM transmitter and receiver

low-speed parallel data streams transmitted simultaneously by means of a number of

subcarriers. For the OFDM system with N subcarriers, the OFDM symbol duration is

N times long, as compared to the symbol duration of the original serial data stream.

Increase in the symbol duration subsequently mitigates the intersymbol interference

(ISI) effect caused by time-dispersion of a multipath channel. The ISI can be completely

removed if each OFDM symbol is preceded by a guard interval which is longer than the

maximum channel delay. In addition, the interchannel interference (ICI) can also be

eliminated by filling the guard interval with a periodic extension of the OFDM symbol

itself (cyclic prefix).

– 15 –
OFDM Transmitter and Receiver Structure

The schematic diagram of a single-user OFDM transmitter and receiver with N subcar-

riers is depicted in Figure 2.3. The bit stream is divided into bit groups and each bit

group constitutes one OFDM symbol. Assuming that OFDM symbols do not interfere

with each other, it suffices to concentrate on one OFDM symbol. The OFDM symbol

is further divided into N bit subgroups. The bits in the nth subgroup are fed into the

nth modulator and modulate the nth subcarrier, n = {0, 1, . . . , N − 1}. The complex

subsymbol bn at the output of the nth modulator is selected from QAM or QPSK con-

stellation and the modulation level of bn depends on the number of allocated bits in the

nth subcarrier. The number of allocated bits per subcarrier depends on the subcarrier

quality. Better quality subcarriers can carry more bits and maintain acceptable bit

error rate (BER) at the receiver. All subsymbols are then fed into an IDFT module

and are transformed into time samples {xi }N −1

i=0 , where xi is,

N −1
1 X
xi = √ bn ej2πin/N (2.9)
N n=0
√
where, 1/ N is a scale factor. A cyclic prefix of ν time samples with total duration

larger than the maximum delay spread is appended to the N time samples, as a means

of eliminating ISI. The sequence {xi }N −1

i=0 is then passed to a D/A converter, whose

output is a continuous signal,

N −1
1 X
x(t) = √ bn ej2πnt/T , 0 ≤ t ≤ T (2.10)
N n=0

where, T is the symbol duration. The pulse-shaping filter g(t) is taken to be normal-

ized to unit. Note that the signal in the frequency domain consists of N sinc(πf T )

– 16 –
functions, each shifted in frequency by 1/T , where each such function corresponds to

the Fourier transform of the unit pulse. Due to the property of the sinc(πf T ) function

that is zero at the integer multiples of 1/T , the subsymbols at different subcarriers can

be distinguished at the receiver.

The baseband signal is up-converted and transmitted through the channel. At the

receiver, the signal is translated to baseband and its cyclic prefix is removed. If the

channel is invariant for the duration of one OFDM symbol, (2.5) simplifies to

L
X
h(t) = βl δ(t − τl ) (2.11)
l=1

where, all the propagation effects are captured by the parameter βl . The signal after

down-conversion is
L
X
r(t) = βl e−j2πfc τl x(t − τl ) + η(t) (2.12)
l=1

where, η(t) is the baseband noise process. Then the signal is digitized by being sampled

at time points kT /N , for k = 0, 1, . . . , N − 1. The k th sample is given as

L N −1
1 XX
rk = √ bn ξl (n)e−j2πnk/N + ηk (2.13)
N l=1 n=0

where

ξl (n) = βl e−j2π(fc +n/T )τl (2.14)

captures the different impact of the lth path delay on different subcarriers and ηk are

noise samples. The time samples {rk }N −1

k=0 enter the DFT module and the subsymbol

at the subcarrier n is given as

N −1
1 X
Rn = √ rk e−j2πnk/N (2.15)
N k=0

– 17 –
After some algebraic manipulations and by using the orthogonality property we have

L
X
Rn = b n ξl (n) + ηn = hn bn + ηn , n = 0, 1, . . . , N − 1 (2.16)
l=1

where, ηn is the noise level at the subcarrier n. The received subsymbols are scaled

versions of the transmitted ones and the complex parameters hn captures the effects

of the multipath channel at subcarrier n.

In order to retrieve the transmitted symbol, the receiver needs CSI in terms of

frequency-domain channel transfer function values at subcarrier frequencies. Channel

estimation can be performed with pilot symbols that are interspersed with transmitted

data symbols. A pilot symbol e consists of known subsymbols {en }N −1

n=0 . The received

pilot subsymbol at subcarrier n after DFT is yn = en hn + ηn . Then, the minimum-

mean-squared-error (MMSE) estimate of the complex gain is obtained hn is obtained

as
yn ηn
h̃n = = hn + , n = 0, 1, . . . , N − 1 (2.17)
en en

The estimates h̃n are used for frequency-domain equalization (FEQ), namely compen-

sation for the phase and amplitude for the phase and amplitude of received subsymbols

prior to detection. Given that the transmitter communicates the utilized modulation

level of each subcarrier at the receiver, the Maximum Likelihood (ML) detector decides

about the transmitted subsymbol based on Rn /h̃n . In this study, we assume that per-

fect CSI is available at the transmitter and the receiver. For slowly time-varying chan-

nels, the transmitter can obtain reliable CSI with feedback from the receiver. Assuming

that all transmitted subsymbols are normalized to unit power, the signal-to-noise ratio

– 18 –
 Figure 2.4: Spectrum of each subchannel in OFDM

(SNR) at the receiver at the nth subcarrier is,

|hn |2
SN Rn = (2.18)
σ2

where, σ 2 is the noise variance and |hn |2 is the link gain of subcarrier n. When the
√
transmitter uses power level pn for subcarrier n, a term pn multiplies subcarrier n in

(2.9) then, (2.18) becomes,

|hn |2 pn
SN Rn = = Hn pn (2.19)
σ2

where, Hn is carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) for the nth subcarrier.

Advantages of OFDM

The orthogonality between the subcarrier frequencies in OFDM makes it possible to

overlap subchannel spectra, as shown in Figure 2.4, for much higher spectral efficiency

than that of simple frequency division multiplexing (FDM). OFDM transmission in-

creases the effective symbol duration and reduces the effective symbol duration and

reduces the effective symbol transmission rate, since information is essentially trans-

mitted over narrowband subcarriers. Thus, it provides high immunity to ISI and delay

– 19 –
spread. In addition, since the frequency-selective broadband channel is divided into a

set of frequency non-selective subcarriers, the equalization procedure at the receiver

simplifies to scalar multiplication for each subcarrier. Furthermore, OFDM provides

additional flexibility in adapting transmission to varying link conditions, by allowing

adaptation for each subsymbol in a subcarrier [31].

2.3.2 OFDMA System Model

OFDMA typically uses FFT size much higher than OFDM, and divides the available

subcarriers into logical groups called subchannels. Unlike OFDM that transmits the

same amount of energy in each subcarrier, OFDMA may transmit different amounts

of energy in each subchannel.

In this thesis, we consider the downlink OFDMA system model as shown in Figure

2.5. We invoke the following assumptions for rest of the thesis: (1) the transmitter

has perfect knowledge of the CSI; (2) a subcarrier at a particular time is not being

shared among users, alternatively one subcarrier is assigned to only one user at a

time. In the figure, K denotes the total number of users and N denotes the total

number of subcarriers. At the transmitter, the serial data stream from the K users

are fed into the encoder block. Using the channel information from all K users, the

subcarrier and bit/power allocation algorithm is applied to assign different subcarriers

to different users. Here, we assume that a subcarrier at a particular time is not being

shared among users. The number of bits and power allocated to each subcarrier is

also determined in the process. This information is used to configure the encoder and

– 20 –
Base Station Transmitter

Subcarrier and bit/power Channel condition from user k, Hk,n

allocation algorithm

Subcarrier 1
User 1, R1
Subcarrier 2 Add
User 2, R2 IFFT and
Parallel to cyclic
.….
Encoder prefix and
.….

Serial
D/A
Subcarrier N
User K, RK

Receiver for User 1

Channel for User 1
Receiver for User 2
Channel for User 2
…

Channel for User k

..

Receiver for User K

Channel for User K

Subcarrier 1

A/D and Subcarrier 2

remove FFT and
Serial to Subcarrier User k
.….

cyclic User k, Rk
prefix Parallel Selector decoder
Subcarrier N

Subcarrier and bit/power

allocation information
Receiver for User k

Figure 2.5: System model of a downlink OFDMA system

– 21 –
the input data is encoded and transmitted accordingly. At the receiver, the subcarrier

and bit/power allocation information is used to configure the subcarrier selector and

decoder to extract the data from the subcarriers assigned to the k th user.

According to the diagram in Figure 2.5, we assume that bk and pk,n denotes a set

of data symbols and the power allocated for the k th user’s nth subcarrier respectively.

Under the assumptions above, the transmitted signal from the base station is detected

by the k th user’s receiver, the decision statistic zk,n for the k th user’s nth subcarrier

data symbol may be written as

√
zk,n = bk,n pk,n hk,n + ηn (2.20)

where, hk,n is a random variable representing the fading for the nth subcarrier between

the base station and k th users receiver. ηn denotes the additive white Gaussian noise

B
(AWGN) with mean zero and variance σ 2 = N0 N . B is assumed to be total available

bandwidth, hence SNR for the k th user’s nth subcarrier signal is,

pk,n | hk,n |2
SNRk,n = B
= pk,n Hk,n (2.21)
N0 N

where, N0 is the noise power spectral density and Hk,n is CNR for the k th user’s nth

subcarrier. We notice that (2.21) is analogous to the SNR of single-user OFDM system

and can be derived similarly as in (2.19).

2.4 Broadband Wireless Traffic Model

The NextG broadband wireless communication systems are designed to provide

broadband, packet oriented connection to a wireless user that is comparable to wired

– 22 –
broadband connections that are in use today. It is expected that there will be a mix

of user applications, like that of wired systems. Further, the traffic characteristics and

system requirements of the various applications can vary widely. The performance

of such broadband wireless systems is thus very much dependent on the details of

applications and their traffic models. This is in contrast to cellular wireless voice

systems where the performance studies focused on physical and link layer performance

with a relatively simple traffic generation model.

The system reference model considered in this thesis as in [16] consists of four com-

munication layers: Application, Network (NET), Radio Resource Management (RRM)

and Physical (PHY). For each user k, the NET layer is submitting the RRM layer the

requested QoS profiles: rQoSk = [rRk , rBERk ], specifying the required rate rRk and

bit error rate rBERk for user k. The RRM layer, aiming at optimal resource allocation,

responds with a set of QoS profiles that can be offered oQoSk = [oRk , oBERk ] to user

k plus a cost of service (CoS) estimation oCoSk , which here is the BS transmission

power. If the offer fulfill the requirements and the cost is acceptable, the contract is

signed and the communication is established. Otherwise some users are dropped or

their rQoSk is down-scaled if permitted (soft QoS approach), and then another rQoSk

is submitted.

In this thesis, traffic behavior is modelled in the following way. At each traffic

realization, a given user chooses randomly the requested QoS profiles rQoSk from the

set of available QoS profiles. Here, we consider two types of QoS profiles (users),

Guaranteed Performance (GP) and Best Effort (BE), differentiated on the basis of

– 23 –
required data rate and BER criteria. Applications that require guaranteed QoS, such

as bounded BER, and a guarantee on the throughput, are called GP services. On the

other hand, applications which are less sensitive to instantaneous variations in available

bandwidth and which do not require guarantees on throughput, are called BE services.

In the context of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), this corresponds to Available

Bit Rate (ABR) service category [23], which can adapt to the bandwidth unused by the

GP service classes. In particular, we suppose that the BE users share the remaining

bandwidth, that is left unused by the GP users.

2.5 Resource Allocation Issues in OFDMA Systems

The underlying philosophy in the problems that are considered in this thesis is

how to provide high data rate, and to provide a wider range of services, such as voice

communications, videophones, and high speed internet access over scarce and unpre-

dictable wireless channel. To achieve higher data rates and support diverse applications

in NextG wireless communication systems it becomes imperative to improve the spec-

tral efficiency and to use available resources efficiently. So far, several papers [14]-[22]

have dealt with the problem of resource allocation in multiuser OFDM system under

various constraints. In this section, we briefly study the issues in providing QoS aware

resource (subcarrier and power) allocation in OFDMA systems for broadband wireless

applications.

– 24 –
2.5.1 QoS Aware Resource Allocation

BWA based on OFDMA is considered as a standard for NextG communication

systems, to provide high-rate data communication over a wireless channel [3]. Recent

researches in the area of providing QoS aware resource allocation in multiuser OFDM

systems can be subdivided in two broad categories: One, is to provide system-level

QoS provisioning i.e., to maximize the sum capacity of the system under the transmit

power constraints, or to minimize the transmit power under the data rate constraints.

Second, is to provide user-level QoS provisioning i.e., to satisfy the QoS (data rate and

BER) constraints of each user of the system. Though several works are done in the

area of system-level QoS provisioning, less interest is shown in the area of user-level

QoS provisioning.

Since one of the goals of NextG is to provide heterogeneous services with diverse

QoS requirements [12] and different broadband services require different amount of

rates and different priorities [27]. For example, it requires more bandwidth to provide

video service than one for data service, and in general voice service is given higher

priority than either a data or a video service. In response to these diverse requirements

network designer may choose to support a variety of services with guaranteed QoS and

high bandwidth utilization while servicing maximum number of users.

2.5.2 Subcarrier and Power Allocation for Heterogeneous Users

In multiuser system using static TDMA or FDMA as multiple access schemes, each

user is allocated a predetermined time slot or frequency band to apply OFDM with

– 25 –
adaptive modulation. Consequently, these unused subcarrier (as a result of adaptive

modulation) within the allocated time slot or frequency band of a user are wasted and

are not used by other users. However, the subcarriers which appear in deep fade to

one user may not be in deep fade for other users. In fact, it is quiet unlikely that

a subcarrier will be in deep fade for all users, as the fading parameters for different

users are mutually independent. This motivates us to consider an adaptive multiuser

subcarrier allocation scheme where the subcarriers are assigned based on instantaneous

channel information. This approach will allow all the subcarriers to be used more

effectively because a subcarrier will be left unused only if it appears to be in deep fade

to all users.

Resource allocation problem in OFDMA systems could be divided into allocating

subcarrier and power to individual users under various constraints. Since, the joint

optimization problem of allocating subcarrier and power optimally to satisfy user-level

QoS (required data rate and BER) under the total available power constraint, involves

discrete assignment and is thus not convex in the unknowns of subcarrier allocation and

the available power, making it a NP-hard problem [25]. As this problem is NP-hard

and exhaustive search over all possible allocations is impractical for large scale sys-

tems, most efforts in literature focus on developing efficient heuristic algorithms which

may provide optimal solutions for simple networks or special cases but are suboptimal

in general [32]. However, if subcarrier allocation is known, the optimization problem

has a closed form solution and can be solved using canonical algorithms. Few recent

researches like in [19], an optimal power allocation is proposed for a determined subcar-

– 26 –
rier assignment scheme to satisfy each user’s data rate proportionally. This motivates

us to carry out subcarrier allocation and power allocation algorithms separately and

sequentially to provide service to heterogeneous users in OFDMA systems.

2.6 Remarks

In this chapter, basic principles of OFDM/OFDMA which makes them suitable

for broadband wireless applications were summarized, furthermore resource allocation

issues in OFDMA were addressed. Firstly, TDL channel model is studied which is a

practical channel model used for the simulation of broadband wireless networks [10].

Next, we present a detailed overview of OFDM system (transmitter and receiver) and

then we discussed the advantages of OFDM like orthogonality, which makes it a superior

technique to provide higher spectral efficiency than other static multiplexing schemes

like FDM. Further, we describe the OFDMA system model to be referenced throughout

the thesis. Additionally, traffic model used in this thesis is explained i.e., combined GP

and BE users. Finally, some research issues to provide QoS aware resource allocation

in OFDMA system for broadband wireless applications were explained.

– 27 –
Chapter 3

QoS Aware Subcarrier Allocation for

Heterogeneous users in OFDMA System

3.1 Introduction

The realization of wireless communication to support high data rates, provision

of various Quality of Service (QoS) profiles for multiple users, and operation in hos-

tile multipath radio channel environment is a new challenge for the future generation

mobile communication systems. All these should be achieved with a minimum use of

limited resources, such as RF bandwidth and transmission power. One of the most

promising modulation and multiple access techniques, which satisfies these demands,

is Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). OFDMA is a unique en-

hancement to existing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) technology.

OFDMA enables carriers to traverse the last-mile bottleneck and provide users with

enhanced broadband services. The optimized use of bandwidth for the simultaneous,

bi-directional and high-speed flow of data for multiple subscribers is allocated accord-

ing to customer requirements. OFDMA facilitates optimal use of bandwidth over the

given frequencies without collision between channels. It overcomes interference and

– 28 –
provides maximum Bandwidth on Demand (BoD), by using logical sub-channels that

support scalability, multiple access and an advanced array of processing capabilities.

Existing subcarrier and power allocation schemes combine OFDM with static Time

Division Multiple Access (TDMA), and handle multiple access by letting users commu-

nicate with the base station (BS) in separate time slot(s). Within each time slot, OFDM

plus waterfilling can be employed to maximize the capacity. Though the OFDM-TDMA

scheme offers certain capacity gain over conventional TDMA scheme with fixed mod-

ulation, channel adaptation here is limited to single-user loading, where subcarriers

experiencing deep fade are wasted because they are not power efficient to carry any

information bit [18]. However, in a multiuser environment the subcarriers that are

in deep fade over the links between the BS and the designated mobile user may not

be in deep fade over the link between the BS and other mobile users. In fact, it is

unlikely that a subcarrier will be in deep fade over all the links as the fading statistics

over these links are mutually independent. This motivates us to consider the multiple

access scheme that users share the downlink transmission by adaptively using different

subcarriers, instead of using different time slots as in TDMA system. This approach

allows all the subcarriers to be used effectively and a subcarrier is left unused only when

it experiences deep fade in all the BS to mobile links. In [14], an OFDMA multiuser

system is shown to offer substantially large capacity increase over OFDM-TDMA.

Assuming that the transmitter knows the instantaneous channel transfer functions

for all users, many papers [14]- [20] have dealt with the problem of subcarrier allocation

for downlink multiuser OFDM system. We can subdivide the related previous works in

– 29 –
two broad categories: One, to provide system level QoS provisioning i.e., to maximize

the sum capacity of the system under the transmit power constraints, or to minimize

the transmit power under the data rate constraints [14], [15], [16], [17]. Second is

to provide user-level QoS provisioning i.e., to satisfy the QoS (data rate and BER)

constraints of each user of the system [18], [19], [20]. In the following subsections the

related previous works done towards QoS provisioning in OFDMA systems are briefly

discussed.

System-level QoS Provisioning

1. Wong et al. One of the earliest efforts to provide analysis for the resource

allocation in multiuser OFDM systems is done in [14]. In this work authors attempted

to minimize the total transmit power under fixed QoS requirements and a given set of

user data rates by adaptively assigning subcarriers to the users along with the number

of bits and power level to each subcarrier. They focus on the practical algorithms that

can support real-time multimedia data whose data rates are generally fixed and BER

requirements are same. In particular they proposed a Lagrangian based algorithm to

derive an adaptive subcarrier and bit allocation algorithm. Given the instantaneous

channel information, the algorithm obtains a suboptimal subcarrier allocation, and then

single-user bit allocation is applied on the allocated subcarriers. Using this scheme, the

overall required transmit power can be reduced by about 5-10 dB from the conventional

OFDM without adaptive modulation. Likewise, the transmit power can be reduced by

about 3-5 dB from the conventional OFDM with adaptive modulation and adaptive

– 30 –
bit allocation, but without adaptive subacarrier allocation. This reduction in transmit

power can also be translated to a significant reduction in the required bit SNR for a

given BER. Moreover, the same improvement can also be translated to a reduction in

the outage probability or to an increase in the area of coverage.

This paper assumes perfect channel estimation, but points out that channel estima-

tion in wireless fading channels is in general not very accurate, the effect of non-ideal

channel information on the performance of any resource allocation scheme is very im-

portant. Hence, detailed sensitivity studies are necessary before the algorithm can be

applied to practical systems.

2. Rhee et al. In [15], dynamic subchannel allocation is performed to maximize the

minimum capacity of all users under the total transmit power constraint. In this paper

an optimal solution is derived but is said to be not useful for real time communication.

Hence, a reduced complexity suboptimal adaptive subchannel allocation algorithm is

proposed for the downlink of an OFDM broadband system. This paper’s result shows

that the suboptimal algortihm with flat energy distribution over all subchannels can

perform almost as well as the optimal power and subchannel allocation scheme. This

suboptimal algorithm offers a significant computational advantage while incurring small

performance degradation.

An alternative approach to reduce the computation complexity in [22] propose a

linear programming method for solving margin adaptive (i.e., minimization of transmit

power under the data rate constraints) and rate adaptive (i.e., maximization of system

capacity under the power constraints) problems and compared the performance with

– 31 –
[14] and [15] respectively. They have shown that the nonlinear optimization problem

in [14], [15] can be converted into linear optimization with integer variables, and that

the optimal subcarrier and bit allocation is achieved by integer programming (IP).

3. Pietrzyk et al. In [16] a simple modification of [14] is made, which extends the

set of required QoS parameters to bit rate and BER and fixed modulation is assumed.

In this work a general contract based QoS framework is proposed, which allows for

efficient management of resources on the system level (for use of any service profile,

which is essential for multimedia traffic).

This paper conclude mentioning that the proposed solution can be applied both

to the downlink and the uplink. The minimization of the total transmit power is a

fair optimization criterion in both cases. However, uplink requires more concern on

synchronization issues.

4. Jang et al. In [17] an analytical proof for optimal subcarrier allocation, for

transmit power adaptation is given to maximize the sum capacity of the users. It is

shown that for the maximization of sum capacity, subcarrier should be assigned to only

one user which has the best channel gain for the subcarrier and the transmit power

should be distributed over the subcarriers following the waterfilling policy.

Moreover, to avoid the computational burden in calculating the waterfilling level

this paper also has proposed an equal-power allocation scheme in which users with the

best channel gain for each subcarrier are selected and then transmit power is equally

distributed among the subcarriers.

– 32 –
User-level QoS Provisioning

Recent works [18], [19], [20] are done in the area of providing user-level QoS provision-

ing.

1. Yin et al. In [18] a two step suboptimal algorithm is proposed that maximizes total

rate subject to each user’s data rate and the total power constraints, which is a NP-

hard combinatorial problem. This algorithm uses Hungarian algorithm for subcarrier

assignment which is an optimal scheme but is said to be suboptimal as it estimates the

number of subcarriers given to each user in the first step.

The proposed scheme determines the subcarrier, bit, and power allocation by decou-

pling a NP-hard combinatorial problem into two steps: (1) estimate how much power

and how many subcarriers for each user based on the user’s average channel gains and

their rate requirements; and (2) subcarrier assignment and bit loading based on the

user’s channel profiles across all subcarriers.

2. Shen et al. In [19] an optimal power allocation is proposed to satisfy each users

data rate proportionally for a determined subcarrier assignment scheme. Though this

paper suggests a way to provide proportional fairness among users but it didn’t consider

the BER differentiation among users.

Subcarrier and power allocation is carried out sequentially to reduce the complexity,

and an optimal power allocation procedure is derived. The results are compared with

the suboptimal algorithm proposed in [15], and is shown that this gives higher capacities

over [15]. This paper further proposes two special cases where the computational

complexity is shown to be of the order O(K).

– 33 –
3. Ergen et al. In [20] an algorithmic (iterative) approach of resource allocation

for proportionally fair and adaptive modulation in OFDMA systems is proposed. In

this author used linear programming technique as in [22] and Hungarian algorithm for

subcarrier assignment, further they proposed an iterative approach for fair scheduling

and to fulfill each users QoS. One of the strengths of this algorithm is that it took

advantage by swapping the subcarriers among users if it contributes towards the re-

duction of transmit power. Though swapping is a very logical step but very few papers

present results considering subcarrier swapping in an OFDMA based system.

The objective function used in [14], [16], [18], [20], [22] is described bit differently

as compared to [15], [17], [19]. At the same time, none of the papers studied to provide

the user-level QoS support for users differentiated both on the basis of rate and BER.

When the requirements for each user’s data rate and BER are given, the subcar-

rier assignment and transmit power allocation problem become more complex to be

analytically solved as compared to when there are no constraints on each user’s data

rate and BER [32]. The problem in this case should be solved by a nonlinear program-

ming technique [15], which requires high complexity to be implemented in practical.

So far several suboptimal algorithms have been proposed to solve the problem such as

iterative method in [14] and heuristic methods in [15], [18].

The outline of this chapter is as follows: In Section 3.2 we formulate a general prob-

lem for subcarrier allocation to maximize the total system throughput while satisfying

the total power and each user’s QoS (data rate and BER) constraints. In Section 3.3 an

optimal method, Hungarian algorithm, to solve the problem presented in Section 3.2 is

– 34 –
described. We further modify the subcarrier allocation method in Rhee et al. [15], and

propose a subcarrier allocation algorithm to provide services to combined Guaranteed

Performance (GP) and Best Effort (BE) users where, GP users are given priority in

assigning subcarriers over BE users. In Section 3.4 we compare the performance of

Hungarian algorithm to that of Rhee et al. and we draw conclusions in Section 3.5.

3.2 Problem Formulation for Subcarrier Allocation in OFDMA System

A schematic diagram of the downlink scenario where base station transmits signal

simultaneously to K users is shown in Figure 2.5. The rate requirements for these users

are denoted as {R1 , R2 , · · · , RK }, and the total transmission power is limited to Ptotal .

Let the total number of OFDMA subcarriers be N and the channel gain associated

with subcarrier n and user k be hk,n . Here, we assume that a subcarrier at a particular

time is not being shared among users, eliminating the interchannel interference (ICI).

To formulate the problem, let ck,n be the assigned index for the k th user: ck,n = 1

if the nth subcarrier is assigned to the k th user, otherwise ck,n = 0. The assignment

matrix is defined as  
 c1,1 c1,2 · · · c1,N 
 
 
c c · · · c 
 2,1 2,2 2,N 

C=  (3.1)
. . . 
 .. . .. . 
 . . . 
 
 
cK,1 cK,2 · · · cK,N

Clearly,
K
X
ck,n = 1
k=1

– 35 –
 and,
K X
X N
ck,n = N
k=1 n=1

Let pk,n is the power allocated to the k th user’s nth subcarrier. Hence the achievable

rate of k th user can be calculated as:

N µ ¶
BX pk,n Hk,n
rk = ck,n log2 1 + (3.2)
N n=1 Γk

The general downlink multiuser resource allocation to maximize the total system

throughput while satisfying user-level QoS, hence can be formulated as

K
X
max rk (3.3)
C,p
k=1
K X
X N
subject to: ck,n pk,n ≤ Ptotal
k=1 n=1

rk ≥ Rk for k = 1, 2, · · · , K

The optimization problem in (3.3) is a NP-hard combinatorial problem with non-

linear constraints. In [14] a Lagrangian based algorithm is proposed which relaxes ck,n

into real numbers, and then solves an unconstrained nonlinear equation set iteratively.

The efficiency and the convergence rate of the algorithm depend critically on the step

size and the initial point of the searching. For systems with large number of subcarriers,

the algorithm becomes prohibitively expensive.

Let Nk and Pk be the number of subcarriers and power assigned to the k th user.

The optimization essentially attempts to solve the following two issues simultaneously:

1. Initial Allocation: determines how many subcarriers (Nk ) and how much power

(Pk ) are needed for each user.

– 36 –
 2. Subcarrier Allocation: assigns a particular set of subcarriers (ck,n ) and the

number of bits to be transmitted for each user.

Different partitions of the system resource, i.e., Nk and Pk , will lead to different

subcarrier and bit assignment. This dependency of the two issues makes the multiuser

optimization much more difficult than that of single-user. However from an applica-

tion standpoint, it is plausible to assume that the resource (subcarriers and power)

allocated to a particular user depends primarily on its rate requirement Rk and its

channel conditions. On the other hand the optimality of subcarrier allocation is clearly

more sensitive to the local channel characteristics. This motivates us to develop a

cost efficient suboptimal algorithm that decouples the optimization problem into two

problems.

3.3 Subcarrier Allocation for Dual-Service Provisioning in OFDMA Sys-

tem

In the first part of this section, we will study a well known optimal solution, Hun-

garian Algorithm [28], for resource (subcarrier) allocation in order to maximize the sum

capacity of the system. Since the price for the optimal solution is obviously the com-

putational time, complexity and scalability (complexity increases with the size of the

system i.e., number of subcarriers). Therefore, in this thesis the Hungarian solution is

treated only as reference upperbound of the sum capacity of the system. Further, we

modify the suboptimal subcarrier allocation method in Rhee et al. [15], and propose

a subcarrier allocation algorithm to provide services to combined GP and BE users

– 37 –
where, GP users are given priority in assigning subcarriers over BE users.

3.3.1 Hungarian Algorithm

In the attempt to solve the decoupled resource allocation problem described in

Section 3.2, as a first step we have to estimate the (Nk , Pk )K

k=1 , considering only user’s

channel conditions. With the rate requirements {R1 , R2 , · · · , RK } given one must (a)

find the minimum amount of resources to satisfy all the user’s requirements, and (b)

assign the remaining resources to the first user (In reality, the base-station may reserve

the remaining resources for future use.) So the first step is equivalent to effectively

estimate the minimum amount of resources to satisfy the rate requirements.

Step 1. In order to quantify the amount of combined resources (power and subcar-

riers), we assume that the amount of power assigned to the users should be proportional

to the number of subcarriers allocated. Let Nk , Pk be the total allocated subcarriers

and power to k th user; N , Ptotal be the total available subcarrier and power. Hence,

Nk , Pk must satisfy
Nk
Pk ≤ Ptotal
N

which is based on the reasonable assumption made in [18].

In this section Step 1 is discussed for the sole purpose of completeness as the objec-

tive of this chapter is to devise subcarrier allocation algorithm. Hence for simulation

purposes we made a simple assumption as a replacement for Step 1, that equal-power

is allocated to each subcarrier and number of subcarriers allocated to users is directly

proportional to each user’s rate requirements.

– 38 –
 Step 2. Once we determine the number of subcarriers Nk and the power Pk allo-

cated to the k th user the Subcarrier Assignment Problem is formulated as follows:

Given N × N matrix R = [rk,n ], find a N × N permutation matrix C = [ck,n ] so

that
K X
X N
R= rk,n ck,n (3.4)
k=1 n=1

is maximum.

For the k th user, we let

µ ¶
B pk,n Hk,n
rk,n = log2 1 +
N Γk

and

rk = [rk,1 , rk,2 , · · · , rk,N ]

R is formed using [r1 , r2 , · · · , rK ]T as row vectors. If the k th user is assigned Nk

subcarriers, we can just split it into Nk virtual users, each has a row in R with the

same rk . In this way, each virtual user can be assigned one and only one different

subcarrier, which is equivalent to assign Nk subcarriers to the k th user. Since, rk,n

linearly approximates the achievable rate on k th user’s nth subcarrier. By solving (3.4)

for R, we effectively find a subcarrier assignment which maximizes the total system

throughput when the number of subcarriers assigned to each user is given.

For example, consider a 2 users and 4 subcarriers system, where the first user is

assigned 1 subcarrier, and the second user is assigned 3 subcarriers. The two user’s

data rate vectors are r1 = [2, 4, 3, 4.5] and r2 = [3.5, 3, 1, 4]. Because the second user

– 39 –
needs 3 subcarriers, we need to duplicate r2 three times when forming the matrix R
 
2 4 3 4.5
 
 
3.5 3 1 4
 
R=


 (3.5)
3.5 3 1 4
 
 
 
3.5 3 1 4

A Hungarian algorithm is designed to solve the above Assignment Problem [28].

The algorithm is based on following property of C:

Lemma 3.1 For all values {uk }N N

k=1 and {vn }n=1 , the value of any assignment with

weight rk,n differs by a constant amount from its value with weight r̄k,n = rk,n − uk − vn .

According to the above preposition, every time we can subtract the minimum el-

ement from each row and column, without changing the optimal permutation matrix

C. This operation will increase the number of zeros in the matrix R. Because R is

always non-negative after the first step, if we eventually find one permutation matrix

C, so that
K X
X N
rk,n ck,n = 0 (3.6)
k=1 n=1

then the corresponding entry ones in C give us the optimal assignment which maximizes

the total cost.

By applying the Hungarian algorithm, R can be transformed to:

 
2.5 0 0 0.5
 
 
0 0 1 0
 
R=


 (3.7)
0 0 1 0
 
 
 
0 0 1 0

– 40 –
 Then we can find the permutation matrix
 
0 0 1 0
 
 
1 0 0 0
 
R=


 (3.8)
0 1 0 0
 
 
 
0 0 0 1

which satisfies (3.6). In this example, the optimal subcarrier allocation is that the first

user is allocated subcarrier 3 and the second user is allocated subcarrier 1,2 and 4.

3.3.2 Proposed Subcarrier Allocation Algorithm

To support the dual class (GP and BE) users, we here modify the suboptimal sub-

carrier assignment algorithm proposed in Rhee et al. [15]. In the proposed subcarrier

assignment algorithm we give priority to GP users in assigning subcarriers to that of

BE users. In assigning subcarrier we assume that total available power at BS is equally

distributed among the subcarriers, as is assumed in [15]. Since power is equally dis-

tributed among the subcarriers, we shall refer to this method of subcarrier assignment

as proposed-EQ. The proposed subcarrier assignment algorithm to provide service to

combined GP and BE users is represented in Figure 3.1.

In this chapter, we did not describe the details of the method in Rhee et al. as we

present a more general algorithm than proposed in [15] considering heterogeneous users

with priority. If we omit Step 2.(d) and Step 3 shown in Figure 3.1, the Proposed-EQ

reduces to the suboptimal algorithm given in Rhee et al.

– 41 –
 1. Initialization (enforce zero initial conditions)
(a) set Rk = 0, Ωk = φ for all k = {1,2,⋯, K } and A = {1, 2,⋯, N }
(b) p = Ptotal / N
2. for k = 1 to K1 (allocate best subcarrier to each GP user)
{
(a) find n satisfying H k ,n ≥ H k , j for all j ∈ A
(b) let Ωk = Ωk ∪ {n}, A = A − {n}
B pH k ,n
(c) Rk = Rk + N log 2 1 + Γ
1
}
(d) while A ≠ φ , repeat step (2) until the rate requirements of GP users are fulfilled
3. for k = K1 + 1 to K (allocate best subcarrier to each BE user)
{
(a) find n satisfying H k ,n ≥ H k , j for all j ∈ A
(b) let Ωk = Ωk ∪ {n}, A = A − {n}
B pH k ,n
(c) Rk = Rk + N log 2 1 + Γ
2
}
4. while A ≠ φ (iteratively give the lowest rate BE user first choice)
{
(a) find k satisfying Rk ≤ Ri for all i , K1 + 1 ≤ i ≤ K
(b) for the found k, find n satisfying H k ,n ≥ H k , j for all j ∈ A
(c) for the found k and n, let Ωk = Ωk ∪ {n}, A = A − {n}
B pH k ,n
(d) Rk = Rk + N log 2 1 + Γ
2
}

Figure 3.1: Proposed-EQ (EQ stands for EQual power): proposed subcarrier allocation

algorithm to provide service to combined GP and BE users

– 42 –
3.4 Simulation Results

To compare the performance of the algorithms simulations has been performed with

the following parameters: number of subcarriers, N = 64; the number of users, K, was

in between 4 and 16; BER, Pe = 10−3 giving SNR Gap, Γ = −ln(5 × 10−3 )/1.5 = 3.53

or 5.48 dB. The channel is considered to be frequency selective multipath channel

consisting of six independent Rayleigh multipaths, with an exponential decaying profile.

The maximum delay spread is 5 microsecond. The maximum doppler frequency spread

is 30 Hz. The total power available at the base station is 64 W. The power spectrum

density of additive white Gaussian noise is −80 dBW/Hz. The overall bandwidth is 1

MHz. The user locations are assumed to be equally distributed. Note that for all the

algorithms discussed under the heading of subcarrier allocation total power is assumed

to be equally distributed among the subcarriers.

In Figure 3.2, sum capacity using Hungarian algorithm and method in Rhee et al.

[15] is drawn for WSNR ranging from 0 to 40 dB. WSNR is defined as the worst possible

average SNR of a user on the boundary of a hexagonal cell. The number of users are

assumed to be equal to four, and the performance is drawn after averaging over 500

different channel realizations. Hungarian algorithm is known to be optimal for resource

assignment to optimize the total cost (i.e., sum capacity) under the constraints (i.e.,

power constraint) [28]. Hence, in Figure 3.2 the performance of Hungarian algorithm

acts as an upper bound for sum capacity. We notice that as the WSNR increases from

0 dB to 40 dB the difference between sum capacities of Hungarian and Rhee et al.

decreases from 3.4726 bps/Hz to 1.3080 bps/Hz.

– 43 –
 20
Hungarian
Method in Rhee et al.

15
Sum Capacity [bit/s/Hz]

10

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
WSNR [dB]

Figure 3.2: Sum capacity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method used in Rhee

et al. vs. WSNR. K = 4, N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB

In Figure 3.3, min-user’s capacity using Hungarian algorithm and method in Rhee

et al. is drawn for WSNR ranging from 0 to 40 dB. Result for fixed TDMA resource

allocation are shown for comparison. The number of users are assumed to be equal to

four, and the performance is drawn after averaging over 500 different channel realiza-

tions. We notice that as WSNR increases from 0 dB to 40 dB the difference between

min-user’s capacity of Rhee et al. and Hungarian increases from 0.2138 bps/Hz to

0.8762 bps/Hz. Since, Method in Rhee et al. maximizes the minimum capacity of all

users under the total power constraint while, Hungarian algorithm maximizes the sum

– 44 –
 5
Hungarian
Method in Rhee et al.

4 TDMA
min(Rk) [bit/s/Hz]

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
WSNR [dB]

Figure 3.3: min-user’s capacity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method used

in Rhee et al. vs. WSNR. K = 4, N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB

capacity not min-user’s capacity. Hence, in Figure 3.3 we notice that method in Rhee

et al. performs optimally.

Figure 3.4 compares the sum capacity using Hungarian algorithm and method in

Rhee et al. for the number of users, K = [4, 8, 16]. The WSNR is assumed to be equal

to 38 dB, and the performance is drawn after averaging over 1000 different channel

realizations and 100 time samples for each realization for each number of the user.

Users are assumed to be uniformly distributed. We notice that sum capacity using

both the algorithm increases as the number of users increases. We also notice that

– 45 –
 18
Hungarian
Method in Rhee et al.

17
Sum Capacity [bit/s/Hz]

16

15

14

13
4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Number of users (K)

Figure 3.4: Sum capacity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method used in Rhee

et al. vs. user number. N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB, WSNR = 38 dB

as the number of user increases from 4 to 16 the difference between sum capacities of

Hungarian and Method in Rhee et al. decreases from 1.5163 bps/Hz to 0.9821 bps/Hz.

This could be explained by multiuser diversity. The more users in the system, the

lower the probability that a subcarrier is in deep fading to all users.

In Figure 3.5, min-user’s capacity using Hungarian algorithm and method in Rhee

et al. is compared for the number of users, K = [4, 8, 16]. The WSNR is assumed to

be equal to 38 dB, and the performance is drawn after averaging over 1000 different

channel realizations and 100 time samples for each realization for each number of the

– 46 –
 3.5
Hungarian
Method in Rhee et al.
3 TDMA

2.5
min(Rk) [bit/s/Hz]

1.5

0.5
4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Number of users (K)

Figure 3.5: min-user’s capacity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method used

in Rhee et al. vs. user number. N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB, WSNR = 38 dB

user. Users are assumed to be uniformly distributed. We notice that as the number of

users increases from 4 to 16 the difference between min-user’s capacities of Hungarian

and Method in Rhee et al. decreases from 0.9807 bps/Hz to 0.3133 bps/Hz.

Figure 3.6 shows the comparison of computational complexity of Hungarian and

Method used in Rhee et al. From the figure we can see that method used in Rhee et

al. is an order of magnitude, about 10 times, faster in execution time than Hungarian

Algorithm. Also we notice that computational complexity remains constant with the

increase in number of users.

– 47 –
 0
10
Hungarian
Method in Rhee et al.
Avg CPU Time [sec]

-1
10

-2
10
4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Number of users (K)

Figure 3.6: Computational complexity comparison of Hungarian algorithm and method

used in Rhee et al. vs. user number. N = 64, Γ = 5.48 dB, WSNR = 38 dB

Results show that the Hungarian algorithm performs optimally for the sum capacity

calculation under the total available power constraints, while method in Rhee et al.

maximizes the min-user’s capacity. Additionally, Hungarian algorithm is found to

be rather computationally complex and hence method in Rhee et al. is chosen and

modified as proposed-EQ algorithm to provide service to combined GP and BE users.

– 48 –
3.5 Conclusions

In this chapter, we initially formulated the problem to maximize the system through-

put while satisfying the total power and each user’s QoS requirements referring to the

OFDMA system model explained in Chapter 2. Then, the performance of Hungarian

algorithm which is known to give an optimal solution for given allocation problem is

compared with the suboptimal subcarrier allocation method in Rhee et al. We found

that Hungarian algorithm gives an upper-bound for the sum capacity optimization

while the method in Rhee et al. allocate the subcarriers so as to maximize the min-

user’s capacity. Certainly the price for the optimal solution is the computational time,

complexity and scalability. Hence, in this thesis Hungarian algorithm is treated as a

reference upper bound of the sum capacity system performance. Later in the chapter,

method in Rhee et al. is modified and a subcarrier allocation algorithm, proposed-EQ,

is proposed to provide service to combined GP and BE users. The proposed algo-

rithm assumes perfect channel state information (CSI) and allocates equal-power to

each subcarrier and hence is called proposed-EQ where EQ stands for EQual power

allocation.

In Chapter 4, we present a power allocation algorithm to be used followed by the

proposed-EQ algorithm to provide services to combined GP and BE users.

– 49 –
Chapter 4

QoS Aware Power Allocation for Combined

Guaranteed Performance and Best Effort Users

in OFDMA System

4.1 Introduction

Broadband wireless access (BWA) based on orthogonal frequency division multiple

access (OFDMA) is considered as a standard for next generation (NextG) communi-

cation systems, to provide high-rate data communication over a wireless channel [3].

One of the goals of NextG mobile communication systems is to provide heterogeneous

services to users with diverse quality-of-service (QoS) requirements [12].

In this chapter, we consider two types of users, Guaranteed Performance (GP) and

Best Effort (BE), differentiated on the basis of required data rate and bit error rate

(BER) criteria. Applications that require guaranteed QoS, such as bounded BER, and

a guarantee on the throughput, are called GP services. On the other hand, applications

which are less sensitive to instantaneous variations in available bandwidth and which

do not require guarantees on throughput, are called BE services. In the context of

– 50 –
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), this corresponds to Available Bit Rate (ABR)

service category [23], which can adapt to the bandwidth unused by the GP service

classes. In particular, we suppose that the BE users share the remaining bandwidth,

that is left unused by the GP users [41].

So far, several papers [14]-[20] have dealt with the problem of resource allocation for

the multiuser OFDM system in a downlink transmission. Since the objective function

used in [14], [16], [18], [20], [22] is described bit differently as compared to [15], [17],

[19] and further in our work [41], [42] hence, here we will discuss the later works for

the performance comparison purposes.

In [15], dynamic subchannel allocation is performed to maximize the minimum

capacity of all users under the total transmit power constraint. The suboptimal sub-

carrier allocation algorithm explained in this paper is the basis of the proposed-EQ

algorithm in Chapter 3. In this scheme power is assumed to be equally distributed

among the subcarriers. This algorithm offers a significant computational advantage

while incurring small performance degradation.

In [17], an analytical proof for optimal subcarrier allocation, for transmit power

adaptation is given to maximize the sum capacity of the users. It is shown that for the

maximization of sum capacity, subcarrier should be assigned to only one user which

has the best channel gain for the subcarrier and the transmit power should be dis-

tributed over the subcarriers following the waterfilling policy. Moreover, to avoid the

computational burden in calculating the waterfilling level this paper also has proposed

an equal-power allocation scheme in which users with the best channel gain for each

– 51 –
subcarrier are selected and then transmit power is equally distributed among the sub-

carriers.

In [19], an optimal power allocation is proposed to satisfy each users data rate

proportionally for a known subcarrier assignment scheme. Though this paper suggests

a way to provide proportional fairness among users but it didn’t consider the BER

differentiation among users.

None of them [15], [17], [19], however, has considered the differentiation among

the users on the basis of data rate and BER requirements simultaneously. In this

chapter we generalize the resource allocation to applications where we are interested

in simultaneously providing services with different QoS characterized by rate and BER

performance. Without the restriction on how to assign the services to the subcarriers,

we thus have Γ, SNR gap, or target BER as an additional variable to optimize. Hence,

we propose a resource allocation algorithm, considering a practical scenario with users

of dual service class differentiated on the basis of rate and BER constraints in an

OFDMA system.

Ideally, subcarriers and power should be allocated jointly to achieve the optimal

solution. However this poses an extreme computational burden on the Base Station

(BS) in order to reach the optimal allocation. Separating the subcarrier and power

allocation is a way to reduce the complexity since the number of variables in the

objective function is almost reduced by half [19]. Here, to make our problem tractable

we separate the subcarrier and power allocation. For subcarrier assignment we modify

the suboptimal subcarrier allocation algorithm proposed in [15] to provide services

– 52 –
to GP and BE users in Section 3.3 where, GP users are given priority in assigning

subcarriers to that of BE users. In assigning subcarrier we assume that total available

power at BS is equally distributed among the subcarriers. In this context we derive

an optimal power allocation solution following analysis in [19] and propose a reduced

complexity power allocation algorithm to provide services to GP and BE users. In

the proposed reduced complexity power allocation algorithm, we allocate power to GP

users so as to satisfy the data rate requirements of GP users and further allocate the

rest of the power equally among the subcarriers assigned to BE users. The simulation

results of the proposed reduced complexity power allocation algorithm are compared

with the proposed-EQ algorithm.

The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. Section 4.2 contains system model

and the problem formulation. In Section 4.3 the optimal solution is derived and a

suboptimal algorithm is proposed. In Section 4.4, we give simulation results of the

proposed algorithm. Section 4.5 contains the concluding remarks.

4.2 Problem Formulation for Power Allocation in OFDMA System

According to the diagram of an OFDMA system shown in Figure 2.5, let us assume

that bk denotes a set of data symbols for the k th users and pk,n is the power allocated to

the k th user’s nth subcarrier. Under the assumptions above, is the transmitted signal

from the base station is detected by the k th user’s receiver, the decision statistic zk,n

for the k th user’s and nth subcarrier data symbol may be written as

√
zk,n = bk,n pk,n hk,n + ηn (4.1)

– 53 –
where, hk,n is a random variable representing the fading for the nth subcarrier between

the base station and k th users receiver. ηn denotes the additive white Gaussian noise

B
(AWGN) with mean zero and variance σ 2 = N0 N . B is assumed to be total available

bandwidth, hence signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the k th user’s nth subcarrier signal is,

pk,n | hk,n |2
SNRk,n = B
= pk,n Hk,n (4.2)
N0 N

where, N0 is the noise power spectral density and Hk,n is carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR)

for k th user’s nth subcarrier.

Assuming the M-ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (MQAM) modulation and

ideal phase detection as in [24], the BER for the k th user’s nth subcarrier signal is

bounded by
µ ¶
1 −1.5SNRk,n
BER ≤ exp (4.3)
5 (2qk,n − 1)

where, qk,n is the number of bits in each data symbol. Note that the BER bound (4.3)

is valid for qk,n ≥ 2 and 0 ≤ SNRk,n ≤ 30 dB. For a given BER rearranging (4.3)

yields the maximum number of bits in a symbol to be transmitted for the k th user’s

nth subcarrier as
µ ¶
SNRk,n
qk,n = log2 1+ bits/symbol (4.4)
Γ

where Γ = − ln(5BER)/1.5. Since the data rate of user k is viewed as the sum of

the user’s subcarrier’s data rate, the data rate of user k in the OFDMA system is

represented by

X qk,n µ ¶
B X pk,n Hk,n
Rk = = log2 1 + bps (4.5)
n∈Ω
T N n∈Ω Γ
k k

– 54 –
where, Ωk is the set of subcarriers allocated to user k and is assumed to be mutually

N
exclusive. T is the OFDMA symbol duration i.e., T = B
seconds.

In this thesis, users are classified as either GP or BE users, out of total K users,

first K1 are assumed to be GP users and, the next (K − K1 ) are assumed to be

BE users. Since BE users have no strict data rate requirements, we formulate our

optimization problem so as to maximize the sum-capacity of BE users for a given

BER while satisfying the data rate requirements of all the GP users for a given BER

under the total power constraint [25]. Thus, we can formulate the general optimization

problem of interest as,

K
X X B µ ¶
pk,n Hk,n
max log2 1 + (4.6)
pk,n ,Ωk
k=K1 +1 n∈Ω
N Γ2
k

X B µ ¶
pk,n Hk,n
subject to: log2 1 + = Rk
n∈Ω
N Γ 1
k

K X
X
pk,n ≤ Ptotal
k=1 n∈Ωk

pk,n ≥ 0 for all k, n

R1 : R2 : . . . : RK1 = γ1 : γ2 : . . . : γK1

Ω1 ∪ Ω2 ∪ . . . ∪ ΩK ⊆ {1, 2, . . . , N }

where, B is the total bandwidth; N is the total number of subcarriers; Ptotal is the

total available power; Γ1 = − ln(5BER1 )/1.5 and Γ2 = − ln(5BER2 )/1.5 are the SNR

gap for GP and BE users respectively; {γi }K

i=1 is a set of values proportional to the GP
1

users rate. In this problem, we need to find pk,n and Ωk to maximize the sum capacity

of BE users under the data rate constraints of GP users and the total power constraint.

– 55 –
As discrete subcarrier assignment is involved in the above problem, it turns to be a

hard problem to solve. However if subcarrier assignment Ωk is known, the dual-service

provisioning problem can be converted to a convex optimization problem, similar to

the transformation used in [25], for Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) Systems.

Hence, we subdivide the problem into subcarrier assignment and power allocation

problem. Subcarrier assignment is a widely studied area and several exhaustive and

algorithmic approaches are available. For our problem of providing service to combined

GP and BE users we present a subcarrier assignment algorithm called proposed-EQ

in Section 3.3. Moreover, once the subcarrier assignment is know the power allocation

problem can be formulated as,

K
X X B µ ¶
pk,n Hk,n
max log2 1 + (4.7)
pk,n
k=K1 +1 n∈Ω
N Γ2
k

X B µ ¶
pk,n Hk,n
subject to: log2 1 + = Rk
n∈Ω
N Γ1
k

K
X X
pk,n ≤ Ptotal
k=1 n∈Ωk

pk,n ≥ 0 for all k, n

R1 : R2 : . . . : RK1 = γ1 : γ2 : . . . : γK1

Ω1 ∪ Ω2 ∪ . . . ∪ ΩK ⊆ {1, 2, . . . , N }

– 56 –
4.3 Power Allocation for Dual-Service Provisioning in OFDMA System

The optimization problem in (4.7) is a convex function of power and can be solved

using Lagrangian multiplier techniques [21], [41].

K µ ¶ Ã K X
!
X X B pk,n Hk,n X
L(pk,n , λk , σk ) = log2 1 + + λ1 Ptotal − pk,n
k=K1 +1 n∈Ωk
N Γ2 k=1 n∈Ωk
K1
( µ ¶
X X B p1,n H1,n
+ λk log2 1 +
k=2 n∈Ωk
N Γ1
µ ¶) X K X
γ1 X B pk,n Hk,n
− log2 1 + + σk pk,n . (4.8)
γk n∈Ω N Γ1 k=1 n∈Ω
k k

where, λk and σk are positive constants.

We differentiate (4.8) with respect to pk,n and set each derivative to 0 to obtain,

K1
X
∂L B H1,n
= −λ1 + λk + σ1 = 0 (4.9)
∂p1,n k=2
N ln2 Γ1 + H1,n p1,n

∂L γ1 B Hk,n
|k=2,...,K1 = −λ1 − λk + σk = 0 (4.10)
∂pk,n γk N ln2 Γ1 + Hk,n pk,n
∂L B Hk,n
|k=K1 +1,...,K = − λ1 + σk = 0 (4.11)
∂pk,n N ln2 Γ2 + Hk,n pk,n

4.3.1 Optimal Solution

In this section we will solve (4.9), (4.10), and (4.11) separately for the optimal

power distribution among GP and BE user’s for the subcarrier assignment scheme.

Power Distribution for GP Users

The optimal power distribution for single GP user is derived using (4.9) and (4.10).

Here, we assume that each user’s subcarriers are arranged according to the ascending

– 57 –
order of CNR i.e., Hk,1 ≤ Hk,2 ≤ . . . ≤ Hk,Nk [19].

Hk,n − Hk,1
pk,n = pk,1 + Γ1 (4.12)
Hk,n Hk,1

Equation (4.12) shows the optimal power distribution for a single user. More power

will be put into the subcarriers with high CNR gain. This is waterfilling in frequency

domain [19].

Using (4.12) and the rate requirements for GP users given in (4.7) we get,

µ µ ¶ ¶
1 N1 H1,1 P1 − V1
log2 1+ + log2 W1
γ1 N Γ1 N1
µ µ ¶ ¶
1 Nk Hk,1 Pk − Vk
= log2 1+ + log2 Wk (4.13)
γk N Γ1 Nk

where,
Nk
X
Pk |k=1,2,...,K1 = pk,n (4.14)
n=1
Nk
X Hk,n − Hk,1
Vk = Γ1 (4.15)
n=2
Hk,n Hk,1
ÃN ! N1
Yk
Hk,n k

Wk = (4.16)
n=2
Hk,1

and, Nk is the number of subcarriers in Ωk .

Power Distribution for BE Users

Similarly, using (4.11), the optimal power distribution for a single BE user is derived.

Hk,n − Hk,1
pk,n = pk,1 + Γ2 (4.17)
Hk,n Hk,1

– 58 –
 Subsequently, power distribution among the BE users is derived using (4.17) and

assuming the data rate requirements for each BE user as equal, we get

µ µ ¶ ¶
NK HK,1 PK − UK
log2 1 + + log2 WK
N Γ2 NK
µ µ ¶ ¶
Nk Hk,1 Pk − Uk
= log2 1 + + log2 Wk (4.18)
N Γ2 Nk

where,
Nk
X
Pk |k=K1 +1,K1 +2,...,K = pk,n (4.19)
n=1
Nk
X Hk,n − Hk,1
Uk = Γ2 (4.20)
n=2
Hk,n Hk,1

Set of nonlinear equations in (4.13), (4.18), along with total power constraint can

be solved iteratively for {Pk }K

k=1 using Newton’s Method. Consequently (4.12), (4.14),

(4.17), (4.19) are solved for the power distribution among each subcarrier of each user.

We notice from (4.12) and (4.17) that the only difference between power allocation to

GP users and BE users is the SNR gap (i.e., Γ1 and Γ2 ).

Set of nonlinear equations in (4.13), (4.18) can be approximated to a single equation

for special case of high CNR. The approximations follow exactly as in [19] and are not

outlined here.

4.3.2 Proposed Power Allocation for Known Subcarrier Assignment

Since to allocate power among GP and BE user’s optimally, we need to solve the

set of nonlinear equations, which is a tedious task and the complexity of the system

increases with the increase in the size of system (number of users and subcarriers).

– 59 –
 Hence, we propose an approach to deal with the high computational complexity

issue for dual-service provisioning (combined GP and BE users). To user’s demanding

strict QoS requirement (GP users), resources (power) are allocated according to the

optimal approach, while for the users with loose QoS requirement (BE users) we can

save the computations by using lower complexity algorithm like equal power allocation

scheme.

In the proposed algorithm we subdivide the power allocation procedure for GP and

BE users. We use optimal waterfilling solution to allocate power to GP users [19],

[41], and an equal power allocation scheme for BE users. The equal power distribution

among subcarriers is shown to be near optimal in [17] for the sum capacity maxi-

mization problem under total power constraints. Figure 4.1 summarizes the proposed

power allocation algorithm. It assumes that subcarrier assignment is known and is de-

termined by aforementioned proposed-EQ algorithm. We shall refer to this method as

proposed-RA, where RA stands for resource allocation. Details of the proposed power

allocation scheme are described as follows:

Step 1. In the initial step, in order to quantify the amount of combined resources

(power and subcarriers), we assume that the amount of power assigned to the users

should be proportional to the number of subcarriers allocated. This initial step is

based on the reasonable assumption made in [18]. Hence, estimate the total power

allocated to GP and BE users respectively in proportion to the number of subcarrier

allocated to GP and BE user class i.e., the power allocated to GP users and BE users
K
P1
Nk
0 00 0
is Ptemp = Ptotal k=1N and Ptemp = Ptotal − Ptemp respectively.

– 60 –
 start

Proposed-EQ Algorithm

K1

∑N
Proposed Power Allocation
Algorithm Distribute power among k
GP users and BE users '
Power allocated to GP users, Ptemp = Ptotal k =1

proportional to the number N

of subcarriers allotted to
each service
Power allocated to BE users, P "
temp = Ptotal − Ptemp
'

Allocate power to GP users

subcarrier under total power
'
Ptemp = Ptemp
'
+δ P constraint of P’temp according
'
Ptemp = Ptemp
'
−δ P
to the optimal waterfilling
solution

if Rk < ( Rk( req ) − ∆R) if Rk > ( Rk( req ) + ∆R)

Rk ≤ Rk( req ) ± ∆R
No No

Yes
P ' = Ptemp
'

P '' = Ptotal − Ptemp

'

Capacity of each BE user,

Above found P” is then
distributed equally among
B P '' H k ,n
the subcarriers allotted to
BE users
Rk k = K1 +1, K1 + 2,…, K
= ∑ N
log 2 1 + K
Γ2
n∈Ω k
∑
k = K1 +1
Nk
stop

Figure 4.1: Flowchart of the proposed-RA (RA stands for Resource Allocation) algo-

rithm to provide service to combined GP and BE users

– 61 –
 Step 2. Allocate power to GP user’s using waterfilling solution under total power

0
constraint Ptemp . This problem is similar to [19] with the exception that it didn’t

consider BER differentiation, which is considered in [41]. Check whether the rate

0
requirements of GP users are fulfilled or not. If not then increase or decrease the Ptemp

and reallocate the power to individual GP users.

Step 3. Calculate the effective power given to BE users (i.e., P 00 = Ptotal − Ptemp
0
).

Power allocated to BE users is then equally distributed among the subcarriers allocated

to the BE users. Hence, the capacity of each BE user is calculated as,

 
X B  P 00 Hk,n 
 
Rk = log2 1 +  (4.21)
N  P
K Γ2 
n∈Ω k Nk
k=K1 +1

Complexity Comparison of Optimal and Proposed Power Allocation

In order to compare the computational complexity of the optimal solution and proposed

power allocation algorithms we measure the reduction in the number of operations

when using proposed power allocation algorithm over optimal solution. We notice

in Section 4.3 that we need to solve the set of nonlinear equations (4.13), (4.18) for

optimal power allocation among users using iterative root finding methods such as

Newton-Raphson method, bisection method, secant method, and many others. The

method used for solving the set of nonlinear equation in our simulations is same as in

[40] which is called ZEROIN subroutine, a combination of bisection and secant method

(the MATLAB implementation of the ZEROIN algorithm is called fzero [37]). The

– 62 –
complexity of the method is O(nK), where n is the number of function evaluations. n

is typically around 10 for smooth functions [40]. The complexity of the proposed power

allocation algorithm is O(nK1 + (K − K1 )), hence the complexity reduction in using

proposed power allocation algorithm over the optimal power allocation solution is of

O((n − 1)(K − K1 )). Note since the subcarrier allocation algorithm used in optimal

and proposed power allocation is same, proposed-EQ, and have the same asymptotic

complexity, hence the real computation saving can only be seen in power allocation.

4.4 Simulation Results

To investigate the performance of the proposed algorithms simulation has been

performed with the following parameters: number of subcarriers, N = 64; the number

of users, K, was in between 4 and 16. The channel is considered to be frequency

selective multipath channel consisting of six independent Rayleigh multipaths, with

an exponential decaying profile. The maximum delay spread is 5 microsecond. The

maximum doppler frequency spread is 30 Hz. The total power available at the base

GP Users BE Users

Number of Users First 50% Last 50%

Required BER 10−5 10−3

Required Capacity 1 bps/Hz Not Applicable

Example Voice, Video Internet Data

Table 4.1: Traffic profile used in simulations

– 63 –
 3.5
Proposed Optimal at Pe = 1e-3

3 Proposed Optimal at Pe = 1e-5

Method in Rhee et al. at P
e
= 1e-3

2.5 Method in Rhee et al. at P

e
= 1e-5
min(Rk) [bits/s/Hz]

Fixed-TDMA at Pe = 1e-3
2 Fixed-TDMA at Pe = 1e-5

1.5

0.5

0
4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Number of users (K)

Figure 4.2: Capacity in OFDMA system vs. number of users

station is 64 W. The power spectrum density of additive white Gaussian noise is −80

dBW/Hz. The overall bandwidth is 1 MHz. The user locations are assumed to be

equally distributed. The traffic behavior is modeled according to the parameters given

in Table 4.1.

Figure 4.2 shows the plot of the min-user’s capacity vs. number of users in the

OFDMA system at different BER. We can see from Figure 4.2 that dynamic resource

allocation achieve significantly higher capacity gain over fixed time division multiple

access (TDMA) i.e., a fixed time slot is allotted to each user in TDMA. Also the equal-

power allocation is shown to give near similar performance as that of optimal power

– 64 –
 110
Proposed Optimal at Pe = 1e-3

100 Proposed Optimal at Pe = 1e-5

Method in Rhee et al. at Pe = 1e-3
Capacity gain over TDMA [%]

90 Method in Rhee et al. at Pe = 1e-5

80

70

60

50

40
4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Number of users (K)

Figure 4.3: Capacity gain over TDMA vs. number of users

allocation.

Figure 4.3 shows the capacity gain vs. the number of users at different BER. We

can see that capacity gain of optimal power allocation and equal power allocation over

TDMA increases as the number of user increases. This phenomenon is also known as

multiuser diversity. Also we can see that in a system of 16 users with the proposed

optimal power allocation solution achieves 18.67% and 19.64% more capacity gain than

the scheme with equal power, when compared to fixed TDMA at BER of 10−3 and 10−5

respectively.

Figure 4.4 shows an example of capacity comparison between proposed-EQ and

– 65 –
 10 4
GP Users BE Users GP Users BE Users
Capacity [bit/s/Hz]

Capacity [bit/s/Hz]
5 2

0 0
1 2 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
User Index User Index
10 4
GP Users BE Users GP Users BE Users
Capacity [bit/s/Hz]

Capacity [bit/s/Hz]
5 2

0 0
1 2 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
User Index User Index
(a) (b)

2 2
GP Users BE Users GP Users BE Users

Capacity [bit/s/Hz]
Capacity [bit/s/Hz]

1 1

0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
User Index User Index
2 2
GP Users BE Users GP Users BE Users
Capacity [bit/s/Hz]

Capacity [bit/s/Hz]

1 1

0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
User Index User Index
(c) (d)

Figure 4.4: Example capacity performance comparison between proposed-EQ (figure

above) and proposed-RA (figure below) for different user index. (a) K = 4, (b) K = 8,

(c) K = 12, (d) K = 16

proposed-RA algorithms. We notice that GP users adapts to their data rate require-

ments (i.e., 1 bps/Hz) after proposed-RA algorithm, while for the BE users rate distri-

bution is found to be almost same as that of after proposed-EQ. This is because we use

equal power allocation method for BE users in both proposed-EQ and proposed-RA

algorithms.

Figure 4.5 compares min-user’s capacity of GP and BE users vs. number of users.

– 66 –
 8
A: proposed-RA-GP
B: proposed-EQ-GP
C: proposed-RA-BE
6 D: proposed-EQ-BE
E: TDMA
min(Rk) [bit/s/Hz]

C, D

4
E

2
A, B

0
4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Number of Users (K)

Figure 4.5: min-user’s capacity of GP and BE users vs. number of users

Here, proposed-RA-GP and proposed-EQ-GP represent the GP user’s performance us-

ing proposed-RA and proposed-EQ algorithms respectively, and similar representation

stands true for BE users. We notice that the min-user’s capacity of GP users remains

constant while those of BE users decreases as the number of users increases. This trend

can easily be understood from Figure 4.4., as the number of users (K) increases the

BE user’s capacity decreases and hence the min-user’s capacity of BE users. BE user’s

capacity performance is also compared with that of the min-user’s capacity perfor-

mance of fixed time division multiple access (TDMA) i.e., a fixed time slot is allotted

to each user in TDMA. We notice that adaptive resource allocation performs better

– 67 –
for smaller number of users than for higher number of users. This is because, as the

number of users increases, more resources (subcarrier and power) are needed to fulfill

the rate requirements of GP users while BE users are left with lesser resources, and

hence we notice the decrease in min-user’s capacity gain over TDMA with the increase

in number of users.

Since the applications supported in the NextG mobile communication systems are

expected to be heterogeneous in nature hence, it becomes imperative to evaluate the

performance of a network supporting heterogeneous users. In this section, an efficient

subcarrier and power allocation algorithm to provide service to combined GP and BE

users differentiated on the basis of QoS requirements in OFDMA system is proposed

and simulations are performed to evaluate the performance.

4.5 Conclusions

In the first part of this chapter, we present an analytical solution for optimal power

allocation to provide services to heterogeneous users differentiated on the basis of QoS

requirements, which is found to be well known waterfilling solution in frequency do-

main. Furthermore, we propose a reduced complexity power allocation algorithm,

where we allocate power to GP users using waterfilling solution and BE users accord-

ing to the equal-power allocation method. Result shows that the equal-power allocation

solution has almost same performance as an optimal solution. At the same time we see

a proportional reduction in computational complexity with the increase in the number

of BE users. This follows from the fact that for the equal-power allocation we need

– 68 –
to equally divide the power among the subcarriers allocated to that of BE users, and

only have to calculate for the optimal power allocation for tight QoS GP users.

In this chapter, we concentrated on discussing a special case of supporting hetero-

geneous users i.e., dual-service provisioning. The proposed power allocation algorithm

could be easily modified for multi-service provisioning by accordingly formulating the

problem to suit the traffic scenario. An example could be to limit the minimum and

maximum capacity given to GP and BE users respectively, and to distribute the left

resources fairly among the GP and BE users. Since we cannot use a traffic model

universally hence for the proposed power allocation algorithm to be useful in vari-

ous scenarios we may need to modify the algorithm according to the necessary traffic

demands.

– 69 –
Chapter 5

Conclusions and Further Works

5.1 Conclusions

The underlying philosophy in the problems that are considered in this thesis is how

to provide QoS aware subcarrier and power allocation in OFDMA systems broadband

wireless applications. The resource (subcarrier and power) allocation issues in OFDM

and OFDMA are overviewed in Chapter 2 along with the detailed OFDM system,

channel and traffic model. Since the joint optimization problem of subcarrier and power

allocation to satisfy user-level QoS under the total available power constraint, involves

discrete assignment and is thus not convex in the unknowns of subcarrier allocation and

the available power, making it a NP-hard problem. However, if subcarrier allocation

is known, the optimization problem has a closed form solution and can be solved using

canonical algorithms. Following this strategy we propose a decoupled subcarrier and

power allocation algorithm to provide service to heterogeneous users.

In Chapter 3, the problem of subcarrier allocation in single-cell downlink OFDMA

system to provide service to heterogeneous users is studied. We consider the case of

maximizing the system capacity while satisfying the QoS criterion of each user using

Hungarian Algorithm, further we consider the case of maximizing the minimum user’s

– 70 –
capacity using method in Rhee et al. [15]. Next, we extend the method used in Rhee

et al. and propose an algorithm to provide service to dual-class users differentiated

on the basis of QoS and we refer to it as proposed-EQ (EQ stands for EQual power

allocation). We assume that total power is allocated equally among all the subcarriers.

In Chapter 4, we study the problem of power allocation for combined Guaranteed

Performance (GP) and Best Effort (BE) users in OFDMA system. In the first part of

this chapter, we review the system model and formulate optimization problem to sup-

port heterogeneous users (combined GP and BE users) under total power constraints.

Next, we present an analytical framework for optimal power allocation, and we further

propose a reduced complexity suboptimal algorithm to provide service to combined GP

and BE users. Our suboptimal algorithm consists of two stages: First, the power is al-

located to GP users following optimal waterfilling strategy. Then, the remaining power

is equally distributed among the subcarriers allocated to BE users. Hence, we see a

proportional reduction in computational complexity with the increase in the number

of BE users. This follows from the fact that for the equal power allocation we need to

equally divide the power among the subcarriers allocated to that of BE users, and only

have to calculate for the optimal power allocation for tight QoS GP users. Simulation

results quantify the performance of these techniques and provide design guidelines for

realistic systems.

– 71 –
5.2 Further Works

In this thesis, we proposed a computationally efficient subcarrier and power allo-

cation algorithm in OFDMA system to provide service to heterogeneous users. The

advantages of this thesis is that it provides us with a more practical and emerging

framework in soon to be prevailing broadband wireless communication industry. Based

on our observations, it appears that the following research areas are important for suc-

cessful build-out of future broadband wireless networks. By no means, however, do

we wish to suggest that these are necessarily the best problems to solve, but it does

provide one viewpoint of the technical challenges and emerging research areas that

will lead to a new network implementation that will support the amalgamation of user

services and QoS requirements.

Multi-cell Environment

In this study we confined our interest to single-cell scenario as most of other studies

in this area. Extending this study to a multi-cell case would be of great interest as is

tried recently in [35]. The associated design problem would be to come up with good

algorithm which handle the co-channel interference (CCI) caused by the RF bandwidth

reuse.

Cross-layer Design

As wireless communication evolves from circuit-switched infrastructure to packet-based

infrastructure the cross-layer design approach appear to be real as well as advantageous.

– 72 –
Cross-layer networking is becoming increasingly important as capacities offered through

the Wireless LAN interface approach the level of capacity that can be handled over the

internet backbone [38]. Since the present wireless systems (3G wireless systems) are

based on single-carrier (such as shared time division) system. Emerging NextG wireless

systems are expected to be based on multicarrier scheme (OFDM) with hundreds or

even thousands of carriers. In the cross-layer networking context, an interesting area

to explore is the design of good algorithm with low complexity [39].

– 73 –
 Abbreviations

ABR available bit rate

ATM asynchronous transfer mode
AWGN additive white Gaussian noise

BE best effort
BER bit error rate
BoD bandwidth on demand
BRAN broadband radio access network
BS base station
BWA broadband wireless access
BWIF broadband wireless internet forum

CoS cost of service

CSI channel state information

DAB digital audio broadcasting

DFT discrete Fourier transform
DMT discrete multi-tone
DSL digital subscriber line
DVB digital video broadcasting

ETSI European telecommunications standards institute

FDM frequency division multiplexing

FDMA frequency division multiple access
FFT fast Fourier transform

GP guaranteed performance

– 74 –
HIPERLAN/2 high performance radio LAN type 2
HPi high-speed portable internet

ICI interchannel interference

IDFT inverse discrete Fourier transform
IFFT inverse fast Fourier transform
ISI intersymbol interference
ISTO industry standards and technology organization

LAN local area network

LMCS local multipoint communication system
LMDS local multipoint distribution system
LOS line-of-sight

MAC medium access control

MAN metropolitan area network

NextG next generation

NLOS non-line-of-sight

OFDM orthogonal frequency division multiplexing

OFDMA orthogonal frequency division multiple access

PDP power delay profile

PHY physical layer

QAM quadrature amplitude modulation

QoS quality-of-service
QPSK quaternary phase-shift keying

– 75 –
RF radio frequency

SNR signal-to-noise ratio

TDL tapped-delay-line
TDMA time division multiple access

VOFDM vector orthogonal frequency division multiplexing

WSNR worst signal-to-noise ratio

– 76 –
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 Curriculum Vitae

Name : Mohmmad Anas

Birth Date : June 30, 1980
Birth Place : Unnao, India
Permanent Address : 3 Civil Lines, Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, India, 209801

Education

2003.03–2005.02 Information and Communications, Gwangju Institute of Science and

Technology (GIST), Gwangju, Republic of Korea (M.S)

1998.06–2002.06 Electronics Engineering, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Ali-

garh, India (B.Tech)

Work Experience

2004.06–2005.02 Study on QoS Aware Resource Allocation for OFDMA Based High-
Speed Portable Internet Services, Electronics and Telecommunications Research
Institute (ETRI), Republic of Korea

2003.02–2004.01 Study and Design of Multirate and Multicarrier Receiver for Satel-
lite Communication, Agency for Defense Development (ADD), Republic of Ko-
rea

Professional Activities

2004.08–Present Student Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics En-

gineers (IEEE)

2000.06–2002.06 Student Member of the Institute of Electronics and Telecommuni-

cation Engineers (IETE), India

Honors and Awards

2003.03–2005.02 KOSEF scholarship (Full Support) from Ministry of Science and

Technology, Republic of Korea

2003.03–2005.02 Brain Korea 21 (BK21) scholarship from Ministry of Education and

Human Resource Development, Republic of Korea