Power Optimal Scheduling for Guaranteed Throughput in Multi-access Fading Channels

A power optimal scheduling algorithm that guarantees desired throughput and bounded delay to each user is developed for fading multi-access multi-band channels that can model many important practical systems including OFDM system and flat and frequency selective multi-access channels. The optimization is over the joint space of all rate allocation and coding strategies. The proposed scheduling assigns rates on each band based only on the current system state, and subsequently uses optimal multi-user signaling to achieve these rates. The scheduling is computationally simple, and hence scalable. Due to uplink-downlink duality, all the results extend in straightforward fashion to the broadcast channels.