Fairness-Based Dynamic Sub-carrier Assignment for Real Time Services in OFDMA Networks

Fairness is a crucial aspect for resource allocation in wireless systems, particularly in the downlink of 4G Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA)-based systems. Therefore, it would be interesting for network operators to have tools to manage fairness in their systems. This work describes the utility-based beta-rule, which is a flexible resource allocation framework based on utility theory that is able to control delaybased fairness in a scenario with real time services in an OFDMAbased system. Not only can this framework be designed to work as well-known classical policies found in the literature, but also as an adaptive policy, which is able to meet a desired system fairness target. System-level simulations demonstrate that the adaptive policy is able to guarantee a fairness requirement by dynamically adapting a fairness-controlling parameter in the subcarrier assignment algorithm. It also presents better results than the classical policies in terms of cell capacity and user satisfaction.