On distributed and coordinated resource allocation for interference mitigation in self-organizing LTE networks

Abstract

We propose a distributed and coordinated radio resource allocation algorithm for orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based cellular networks to self-organize efficient and stable frequency reuse patterns. In the proposed radio resource allocation algorithm, each cell independently and dynamically allocates modulation and coding scheme (MCS), resource block (RB), and transmit power to its users in a way that its total downlink (DL) transmit power is minimized, while users' throughput demands are satisfied. Moreover, each cell informs neighboring cells of the RBs that have been scheduled for its cell-edge users' DL transmissions through message passing. Accordingly, the neighboring cells abstain from assigning high transmit powers to the specified RBs. Extensive simulation results attempt to demonstrate that DL power control on a per-RB basis may play a key role in future networks, and show that the distributed minimization of DL transmit power at each cell, supported by intercell interference coordination, is able to provide a 20% improvement of network throughput, considerably reduce the number of user outages, and significantly enhance spatial reuse, as compared to cutting-edge resource allocation schemes.