UWEE Tech Report Series

Rate Stable Sub-Carrier Allocation Algorithm in an OFDMA System


UWEETR-2004-0026

Author(s):
Tara Javidi

Keywords:
Wireless Communication, OFDM, Throughput Analysis

Abstract

This paper considers the issue of optimal subcarrier allocation in OFDMA. We show, via a counter example, that water-filling based subcarrier allocation policies, contrary to conventional wisdom, fail to provide rate-stability for an otherwise stabilizable OFDMA system. Water-filling is too myopic when considering long-time average performance, e.g. delay, queue lengths, and even long-run throughput. This is because such policies ignore variable state (queue length) information, while, in fact, such an information is necessary to guarantee rate stability and/or to minimize average delay. In this paper, we identify a policy, based on maximum weighted matching and show that such a policy achieves \%100 throughput for all admissible traffic. We discuss how in special cases, such a policy can be approximated by a decentralized and randomized algorithm. \

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