The impact of space division multiplexing on resource allocation: a unified treatment of TDMA, OFDMA and CDMA

Space division multiple access (SDMA) with an antenna array at the transmitter is a promising means for increasing system capacity and supporting rate-demanding services. However, the presence of an antenna array at the physical layer raises significant issues at higher layers. In this paper, we attempt to capture the impact of SDMA on access layer channel allocation, reflected on channel reuse. This impact obtains different twists in TDMA, CDMA and OFDMA due to the different nature of co-channel and cross-channel interference and the different interaction of user spatial channel characteristics with system channels, namely time slots, codes and subcarriers. We consider these access schemes in a generalized unified framework and propose heuristic algorithms for channel allocation, downlink beamforming and transmit power control so as to increase total provisioned system rate and provide QoS to users in the form of minimum rate guarantees. We study the class of greedy algorithms that rely on criteria such as induced or received interference and signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), and a class of SIR balancing algorithms. Results show superior performance for SIR balancing resource allocation and expose the performance benefits of cross-layer design.