Achieving the Nash bargaining solution in OFDMA uplink using distributed scheduling with limited feedback

The Nash bargaining solution in OFDMA uplink scheduling is investigated. The problem is equivalent to proportional fair scheduling. The logarithm of throughput, when used as a utility function, ensures proportional fairness and thus is equivalent to the Nash bargaining solution. An algorithm to implement the solution in the centralized and distributed scenarios is proposed. In the centralized scheduling scenario, the base station is assumed to enforce the cooperative solution. In the distributed scheduling scenario, cooperation between mobile users is implemented using limited feedback of channel state information. A quantization scheme for channel state information is proposed and shown to achieve results close to optimal with a limited number of feedback bits. In fact, only one bit feedback per subcarrier was sufficient to achieve near-optimal results with proportional fair scheduling.