The distributed infrastructure of WiMAX mesh and relay networks, and the need for reducing communication overhead between the BS and network nodes are the motivations behind proposing decentralized resource allocation schemes. Potentially, either no central controller exists or it does not influence the allocation decision in a decentralized resource allocation. These facts make the decentralized schemes more scalable.
Resource allocation in decentralized networks is essentially different from centralized one. In centralized schemes, the BS collects CSI from all users, allocates the subcarriers or power to the users, and informs the users of allocated resources. On the other hand, users may not need to know the CSI of the other parties in decentralized schemes. Besides, the parties may not be aware of the decision of each other, so a collision is probable. Accordingly, in each proposed distributed resource allocation scheme for OFDM-based networks, the following questions should be answered:
- How does a user achieve the required CSI? The hidden terminal and exposed node problems are common problems in self-organized and decentralized networks, because it is assumed that no central controller exists to assist in signaling. Besides, the signaling overhead should be reasonable for a practical implementation.
- How should the node coordinate or compete with the other nodes to attain the resources? A node does not know the requirements of the other nodes, at each instant, so competence or coordination is a “must” for a node which wants to start capturing the resources.
An interference aware subchannel allocation scheme that overcomes the drawbacks of decentralized schemes.
As the scheme uses updated CSI at the beginning of each MAC frame, the channel does not need to be assumed time-invariant over multiple MAC frames. The scheme is appropriate for OFDM-TDD networks. The MAC frame is divided into mini-slots; at the first mini-slot of each MAC frame the ongoing receiver nodes broadcast a busy signal to inform the respected transmitters of the quality of the allocated subchannel. The inactive nodes does not send any busy signal. The ongoing transmitter nodes listen to the busy signal and adapt their subcarrier allocation to their specific receiver nodes according to the information on the busy signal. Also, a node that wants to start transmission listens to the busy signal and chooses the subcarriers that are not interfered by ongoing transmissions and their interference. In other words, it selects those subcarriers with a received busy signal power less than a threshold. The advantages of the scheme are as follows:
- Signaling overhead is low compared to other radio resource allocation schemes
- The co-channel interference is reduced significantly since the scheme is interference aware
- Full frequency reuse is possible
A decentralized power allocation problem for a cooperative transmission is formulated in Ref. [43]. The objective is to minimize the total transmission power of all users subject to providing minimum rate requirement of each user. The network model uses a time division multiple access with the OFDM multiplexing (TDMA-OFDM), so only one user accesses the total OFDM subcarriers in each time slot. The user may allocate some of the subcarriers to transmit its traffic and the rest of subcarriers to relay the other users’ traffic to minimize total transmission power. In other words, the resource allocation problem determines if a user should cooperate with other users, and in case of cooperation it determines the subcarriers and power allocation. A cooperative user may be allocated more power than a noncooperative user, because its location and channel gain allows it to cooperate with other users. However, the total network power is minimized by cooperation among users. A decoupled subcarrier and power allocation scheme is proposed to solve the problem.
Assuming an access point in the network proposes a distributed decision-making scheme for the resource allocation. Each user measures its CSI upon receiving a beacon signal from the access point. The subcarriers are divided into several groups (equal to the number of users), and the approximate channel gain of each group for each user is estimated. Then, the users contend with each other to achieve the group with the best channel quality of their own. A backoff mechanism is proposed to avoid collision. Each user start contending for the best group of subcarriers after a backoff time which is proportional to the best group gain for that user. After contention, the access point informs the users of the winners which can transmit in the next transmission interval. A frame is divided into three subframes, contention, acknowledge, and transmission subframes. This scheme is actually a distributed resource allocation scheme for a centralized network that aims to reduce the signaling overhead and processing task of the access point.
A collaborative subcarrier allocation using the swarm intelligent. The scheme relies on the central controller to achieve the updated information of available subcarriers and the highest and lowest demands for each subcarrier. In other words, the nodes negotiate with the central controller iteratively in a negotiation phase. In each iteration, the nodes inform the central controller of their demand for a specific subcarrier. Then, the central controller broadcast a message indicating the highest and lowest demands for each subcarrier. Based on the feedback messages that occur several times in each negotiation phase, the nodes intelligently decide upon subcarriers.
A comparison between the capacity performance of OFDM-TDMA and OFDM-FDMA in a two-hop distributed network. The time frame is divided by two in OFDM-TDMA. In each half of the time frame, all subcarriers are devoted for transmission over one hop. A power allocation algorithm is proposed to maximize the end-to-end capacity subject to the overall transmit power constraint of the two hops. For OFDM-FDMA, the subcarriers are assigned to the two hops without overlapping and a joint subcarrier and power allocation algorithm is proposed. The simulation performance results of the algorithms show that OFDM-FDMA achieves a higher end-to-end capacity than OFDM-TDMA.
