A joint resource allocation and power control algorithm for heterogeneous network

In this paper, we propose an algorithm to solve the joint frequency resource and transmission power allocation problem for heterogeneous network (HetNet) of LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) systems, which consiste of several types of base station nodes, such as macrocell, picocell (hotzone), femtocell and relay. The optimization problem is formulated to minimize the sum downlink interference power level of all base station nodes in HetNet, while the service rate requirements of the serving users are satisfied. We firstly obtain a global user selection criterion, in which all the base stations are aware of all link gains and the transmission power of all the base station nodes. A sub-optimal user selection criterion is derived to obtain near optimal power and resource allocation results, which performs in a distributed manner and only requires the link information reported by adjacent users within or near the coverage area. Simulation results prove that the proposed iterative algorithm allocates power and frequency resource in fast convergence speed, which achieves satisfactory performance in terms of interference suppression and user outage ratio.