Hard fairness versus proportional fairness in wireless communications: The single-cell case

Müller R (2007)


Publication Status: Published

Publication Type: Journal article, Original article

Publication year: 2007

Journal

Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Book Volume: 53

Pages Range: 1366-1385

Journal Issue: 4

DOI: 10.1109/TIT.2007.892790

Abstract

We consider a wireless communication system formed by a single cell with one base station and K user terminals. User channels are characterized by frequency-selective fading due to small-scale effects, modeled as a set of M parallel block-fading channels, and a frequency-flat distance-dependent path loss. We compare delay-limited systems with variable-rate systems under fairness constraints, in terms of the achieved system spectral efficiency C (bit/s/Hz) versus E/ N. The considered delay-limited systems impose "hard-fairness": every user transmits at its desired rate on all blocks, independently of its fading conditions. The variable-rate system imposes proportional fairness via the popular Proportional Fair Scheduling (PFS) algorithm, currently implemented in 3G wireless for data (delay-tolerant) applications. We find simple iterative resource allocation algorithms that converge to the optimal delay-limited throughput for orthogonal (frequency-division multiple access (FDMA)/ time-division multiple access (TDMA)) and optimal (superposition/ interference cancellation) signaling. In the limit of large K and finite M we find closed-form expressions for C as a function of E/ N. We show that in this limit, the optimal allocation policy consists of letting each user transmit on its best subchannel only. Also, we find a simple closed-form expression for the throughput of PFS in a cellular environment, that holds for any K and M. Finally, we obtain closed-form expressions for C versus E/N in the low and high spectral efficiency regimes. The conclusions of ouranalysis in terms of system design guidelines are as follows: a) if hard fairness is a requirement, orthogonal access incurs a large throughput penalty with respect to the optimal (superposition coding) strategy, especially in the regime of high spectral efficiency; b) for high spectral efficiency, PFS does not provide any significant gain and may even perform worse than the optimal delay-limited system, despite the fact that the imposed fairness constraint is laxer; c) for low to moderate spectral efficiency, the stricter hard-fariness constraint incurs in a large throughput penalty with respect to PFS. © 2007 IEEE.

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How to cite

APA:

Müller, R. (2007). Hard fairness versus proportional fairness in wireless communications: The single-cell case. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 53(4), 1366-1385. https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TIT.2007.892790

MLA:

Müller, Ralf. "Hard fairness versus proportional fairness in wireless communications: The single-cell case." IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 53.4 (2007): 1366-1385.

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