Efficient resource allocation for emerging OFDMA wireless networks

In the context of IEEE 802.16e networks, physical transmission relies on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). This mechanism defines resource allocation as a bi-dimensional mapping of spectral resources. Although in the IEEE 802.16e standard the Medium Access Control (MAC) and physical (PHY) layers are well defined, the problem of resource allocation still remains an open issue, encouraging competition between companies to develop new commercial products. As this component is crucial to guaranteeing maximum performance and Quality of Service (QoS) fulfillment, it is critical to define efficient algorithms to solve the problem. Usually, the allocation problem is divided into two sub-problems: the scheduler problem, which decides the amount of resources that must be granted to each connection or user, and the mapping problem, which defines how the granted resources are allocated in the bi-dimensional matrix of spectral resources. Several factors have to be taken into account by the mapping algorithms, such as efficiency, QoS, power consumption and algorithmic complexity. In this work we define an adaptive algorithm to solve the OFDMA mapping problem in IEEE 802.16e networks. The performance of our proposal is extensively evaluated against other state-of-the-art proposals, by means of a simulation tool.