Neighbor-friendly autonomous algorithm for power spectrum allocation in OFDM networks

To cope with the dramatic increase in mobile data traffic, the widespread deployment of base stations constitutes a promising solution. However, it also causes high levels of interference, especially at the cell-edges. Most interference management techniques assume coordination between base stations, which involves undesired overhead and delays. To tackle this problem, we propose a neighbor-friendly autonomous algorithm for power spectrum allocation in wireless OFDM networks that protects victim users from neighboring cells through a penalty factor in the power allocation level. We refer to it as the neighbor-friendly iterative waterfilling (NF-IWF) algorithm. In high interference scenarios, it can achieve a victim user data rate increase by a factor of 3.5 compared to IWF and 60 compared to equal power allocation with a marginal decrease of the primary user data rate.