Efficient Bandwidth and Power Allocation Algorithms for Multiuser MIMO-OFDM Systems

This paper studies the problem of finding an effective subcarrier and power allocation strategy for downlink communication to multiple users in a MIMO-OFDM system with zero-forcing beamforming. The problem of minimizing total power consumption with constraint on transmission rate for users is formulated. The problem of joint allocation is divided into two stages. In the first stage, the number of subcarriers that each user will get is determined based on the users’ average signal-to-noise ratio. In the second stage, it finds the best assignment of subcarriers to users. The optimal method is a complex combinatorial problem which can only be assuredly solved through an Exhaustive Search (ES). Since the ES method has high computational complexity, the normalized user selection algorithm and the simplified-normalized user selection algorithm are proposed to reduce the computational complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed low complexity algorithms offer better performance compared with an existing algorithm.