Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithm-based Schemes for Subcarrier, Bit, and Power Allocation in Multiuser OFDM Systems

Multiuser orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a very promising multiple access technique to efficiently utilize limited RF bandwidth and transmit power in wideband transmission over multipath fading channels. When a wideband spectrum is shared by multiple users in multiuser OFDM-based systems, different users may experience different fading conditions at all subcarriers. Each user is assigned a subset of all subcarriers by some allocation algorithm. Thus, multiuser diversity can be achieved by adaptively adjusting subcarrier, bit, and power allocation depending on channel status among users at different locations (Wong et al., 1999a). In (Wong et al., 1999a), Wong applies a Lagrangian optimization technique and an iterative algorithm to solve the subcarrier, bit and power allocation problem. The suboptimal scheme for the NP-hard joint optimization problem is decoupled into two steps while it has a high computational complexity. A sub-optimal algorithm has been proposed to solve a related problem (Wong et al., 1999b). In (Wong et al., 1999b), Wong presents a real-time subcarrier allocation (SA) algorithm. It is a two-phase algorithm, including the constructive initial assignment (CIA) and the subcarrier swapping steps. The initial subcarrier allocation algorithm needs to pre-determine the numbers of subcarriers for each user before the allocation process starts. The performance of the SAbased algorithm will be compared in the simulation. In (Kim et al., 2006), Kim shows that the allocation problem in (Wong et al., 1999a) can be transformed into an integer programming (IP) problem. The branch-and-bound algorithm (Wolsey, 1998) can be employed to find the optimal solution of the allocation problem which has exponential computational complexity in the worse cases. We utilize the approach to obtain the optimal solution as the performance bound for comparison. Evolutionary algorithms (EA) are used to solve extremely complex search and optimization problems which are difficult to solve through simple methods. EAs are intended to provide a better solution, as it is based on the natural theory of evolution. Evolutionary algorithm (EA)-based schemes have been applied to solve subcarrier, bit, and power allocation problems (Wang et al., 2005) (Reddy et al., 2007) (Reddy & Phora, 2007) (Pao & Chen, 2008). In general, chromosomes can be designed with binary, integer, or real representation. The chromosome lengths are related to the number of subcarriers. Each element in the chromosome is a subcarrier allocated to a user. In this research, a subset of subcarriers can be assigned to one user depending upon the availability of subcarriers at a particular time