An Optimization Approach to Joint Cell, Channel and Power Allocation in Multicell Networks

In multicell wireless networks the resource allocation task includes the selection of the serving cell and the allocation of channels and transmission power. While all of these tasks have been studied in the past, all three jointly are seldom addressed. In this paper we formulate the joint cell, channel and power allocation problem as an optimization task whose purpose is to maximize either the minimum user throughput or the multicell sum throughput or a weighted combination of these two objectives. The max-min problem and a simplified max-throughput problem are both NP-hard and we therefore propose heuristic solution approaches. In particular, we develop a successive allocation update algorithm that iteratively improves the cell, channel and power allocations while having to solve one of these tasks at a time. We compare the performance of this allocation update procedure with that of the optimization based techniques. We present numerical results that give new and valuable insights into the trade off between fair and sum throughput optimal joint resource allocation strategies both for the downlink and the uplink.