Pareto Boundary of Utility Sets for Multiuser Wireless Systems

Pareto optimality is an important property in game theory and mechanism design, which can be utilized to design resource allocation strategies in wireless systems. We analyze the structure of the boundary points of certain utility sets based on interference functions. We particularly investigate the cases with no power constraints, with individual power constraints, and with a total power constraint. We display the dependency between Pareto optimality and interference coupling in wireless systems. An axiomatic framework of interference functions and a global dependency matrix is used to characterize interference coupling in wireless systems. The relationship between interference-balancing functions and Pareto optimality of the boundary points is elucidated. Among other results, it is shown that the boundary points of utility sets with individual power constraints and with strictly monotonic interference functions are Pareto-optimal if and only if the corresponding restricted global dependency matrix is irreducible. The obtained results provide certain insight when suitable algorithms can be designed for network utility maximization.