Joint allocation of subcarriers and transmit powers in a multiuser OFDM cellular network

In the present paper, we consider the problem of joint bandwidth (subcarriers) and power allocation for the downlink of a multi-user multi-cell OFDM cellular network. This resource allocation problem is formulated as a power minimization problem, subject to meeting the target rates of all users in the network. We develop a distributed solution to find the globally optimal allocation which determines the subcarrier and power allocation dynamically. In addition, we investigate the impact of reducing the complexity by reducing the number of degrees of freedom available in the optimization. In particular, we consider a static bandwidth allocation scheme, and a static power allocation scheme. The numerical results show that the penalty on network performance due to the reduction in the available degrees of freedom is not significant.