Resource allocation for OFDMA systems

In an OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) scenario in which the users of a multiuser system share the common channel simultaneously, the issue of allocating the shared channel resources (subcarrier and power) among the users is called the resource allocation problem. This problem, which is nonlinear due to its nature, also has a discrete structure. In this paper, a fast algorithm based on linear programming is proposed. The algorithm is composed of two phases. In the first one, the original integer programming problem is first linearized and then after relaxing the integer constraints a solution is obtained by the aid of the Simplex Algorithm. In the second phase, by exploiting the sub-carrier allocation obtained in first phase, bits are allocated to each user independently using the Greedy Algorithm. The simulation results have demonstrated that, the proposed algorithm can achieve a performance very close to that of the integer programming techniques while being significantly faster.