Centralized vs Distributed Resource Allocation in Multi-Cell OFDMA Systems

Radio Resource Management with Inter-cell Interference Coordination (ICIC), is a key issue under investigation for next generation wireless systems such as Long Term Evolution (LTE). Although centralized resource allocation (RA) and collaborative processing can optimally perform ICIC, the overall required complexity suggests the consideration of distributed techniques. In this paper we propose and compare a centralized RA strategy aimed at maximizing the sum-rate of a multi-cell clustered system in presence of power and fairness constraints, and a distributed RA strategy where inter-cell interference is partially coordinated through power planning schemes with preassigned power (an example is fractional frequency reuse). The distributed RA strategy reduces both signaling and feedback requirements, preserves intra-cell fairness and jointly works with a load balancing algorithm to support inter-cell fairness. We show in the results that the distributed RA with aggressive frequency reuse is able to approach the performance of the centralized RA when the number of users is large, while preserving the same level of fairness.