Joint Beamforming and Power Control for Optimal SIR Assignment in Cellular Uplinks

This paper considers the nonconvex and globally coupled problem of joint antenna beamforming and transmit power control, in order to maximize the network-wide utility as a function of attained SIRs. Using a spillage-load characterization for power control [13], we assign utility as a function of attained SIRs and formulate the joint optimization as a utility maximization problem. Despite the highly coupled structure of the problem, we propose an efficient distributed algorithm that is proved to be convergent in general. Despite nonconvexity in the joint optimization, we prove global optimality in the two user case. We find in simulations the algorithm always converges to the global optimal allocation, and the Pareto-optimal tradeoff between power and antenna beamforming in maximizing network utility is illustrated.