Three-Stage Resource Allocation Algorithm for Energy-Efficient Heterogeneous Networks

In this paper, we investigate the energy efficiency of downlink transmissions in heterogeneous networks. Our objective is to satisfy the rate requirement of users while maximizing the energy efficiency of the network. We employ the fractional frequency reuse (FFR) scheme to increase the energy efficiency of downlink transmissions and to eliminate outages for the cell-edge users. We formulate the joint cell-center boundary selection for FFR, scheduling, and power allocation problems. This formulation gives us a mixed discrete (selection of the cell-center boundary selection for FFR and scheduling) and continuous (power allocation) optimization problem which is hard to solve jointly. In order to solve this problem, we propose a three-stage resource allocation algorithm. In the first stage, we propose a dynamic method to determine the cell-center region boundaries. In the second stage, we employ the Lagrangian-directed scheduler algorithm to incorporate the rate requirements of users. The third stage solves the power allocation subproblem using the Levenberg-Marquardt method combined with dual decomposition. In order to make the base stations further reduce intercell interference, interference pricing mechanism is applied. This scheme penalizes the utility of a base station with the interference it creates. The performance of the proposed algorithm is simulated in a long-term evolution (LTE) network simulation tool. Our numerical results reveal that significant gains in terms of energy efficiency can be achieved with the proposed algorithm. The outage probability is also significantly reduced.