Multi-criteria ranking based greedy algorithm for physical resource block allocation in multi-carrier wireless communication systems

A computationally efficient algorithm, referred to as the multi-criteria ranking based greedy (MCRG) algorithm, is proposed for physical resource block (PRB) allocation in multi-carrier wireless communications systems, where the users' utilities are ranked with multiple criteria. The MCRG algorithm not only outperforms the previous single criterion ranking based greedy algorithm in terms of throughput and outage probability, but also provides a near optimal performance, irrespective of whether the channel frequency response (CFR) or bit error rate (BER) or throughput optimisation utilities are used. In particular, when the MCRG algorithm is used to optimise the CFR utility, the overall computational complexity is kept at a very low level, without sacrificing the performance. To further reduce the overall computational complexity, a selectivity ratio is included in the MCRG algorithm, where greedy PRB allocation is applied only to a selection of users with lower multi-criteria ranking.

► We investigate computationally efficient physical resource block allocation for 4G LTE systems.
► The proposed greedy algorithm is incorporated with multi-criteria ranking of multiple users' utilities.
► It is best to use the proposed algorithm to optimise the channel frequency response utility.
► The resulting performance is near-optimal, with a complexity reduction of around 100 times over the previous algorithms.