A joint resource allocation and power control algorithm for heterogeneous network

In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm to solve the joint frequency resource and transmission power allocation problem for the heterogeneous network (HetNet) of LTE-advanced (LTE-A) system, which is consisted of several types of base station nodes (BSNs), such as macrocells, picocells (hotzone), femtocells and relays. The optimization problem is formulated to minimize the sum downlink interference power level of all BSNs in HetNet, while the service rate requirements of the serving users are satisfied. We firstly obtain a global user selection criterion, in which all the base stations are aware of all the link information including pathloss and the transmission power of all BSNs. A sub-optimal user selection criterion is derived to obtain near optimal power and resource allocation results, which performs in a distributed manner and only requires the link information reported by adjacent users near the coverage boundary. Simulation results prove that the proposed iterative algorithm allocates power and frequency resource in fast convergence speed, which achieves satisfying performance in terms of interference suppression and user outage ratio.