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Self-Organizing Fractional Power Control for

Interference Coordination in OFDMA Networks


Richard Combes

,Zwi Altman

and Eitan Altman

France Telecom Research and Development


38/40 rue du General Leclerc,92794 Issy-les-Moulineaux
Email:{richard.combes,zwi.altman}@orange-ftgroup.com

INRIA Sophia Antipolis


06902 Sophia Antipolis, France
Email:Eitan.Altman@sophia.inria.fr
AbstractThis paper shows a Self-organizing networks (SON)
algorithm for interference coordination in downlink Orthogonal
Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) networks. A dis-
tributed algorithm is introduced with a proof of convergence for
a static user population. The algorithm uses closed-form formulas
for the transmit powers update, and is therefore computationally
light. The proposed algorithm is applied to a 39 cells dynamic
network simulator with an File Transfer Protocol (FTP) service,
showing signicant performance gains over a Reuse 1. The
Quality of Service (QoS) of cell-edge users improves without
degrading the QoS of other users. The trade-off between Block
Call Rate (BCR), which is the proportion of users rejected
by admission control, and cell-edge user throughput is shown,
and a simple method for the network operator to manage it is
provided.
1
Index TermsWireless networks, Self-Optimizing Networks,
OFDMA Networks, Interference Coordination, Distributed
Power Control
I. INTRODUCTION
In multiuser communication networks, interference man-
agement is often a central issue for increasing the system
performance and has been the subject of much research in both
wired and wireless networks. Different techniques have been
suggested: optimization of a static power allocation ([1], [2]),
dynamic power control ([3]), inter-cell scheduling ([4], [5]),
load balancing ([6]) and dynamic beam-forming ([7]) to name
but a few. Interference is particularly harmful for cell-edge
users i.e users with low Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio
(SINR) and can cause considerable degradation of experienced
QoS. Strict requirements for cell-edge user throughput have
been dened by [8].
Two issues have not, to our knowledge, been addressed by
previous work: the rst is the fact that interference coordi-
nation can possibly increase the BCR of some Base Station
(BS) and how to control it, and the second is how to nd
closed-form formulas for the power update, so that the power
control algorithm is computationally light. We address both
these problems in this paper, and show that the signaling load
of the algorithm is minimal.
1
This work has been partially supported by the Agence Nationale de la
Recherche within the project ANR-09-VERS0: ECOSCELLS.
The rst contribution of this paper is a distributed dynamic
interference coordination algorithm for downlink OFDMA net-
works which uses information available from neighboring cells
through the X2 interface (a link between neighboring BSs).
The BSs update their transmit powers every 1s using closed-
form formulas which incorporate the effects of fast-fading
and opportunistic scheduling. The computing power required
is hence minimal. The second contribution of this paper is
to show the trade-off between cell-edge user throughput and
BCR, and to provide the network operator with a simple
way to manage this trade-off by adjusting a parameter of our
algorithm.
This paper is organized as follows: Section II states the
dynamic power control problem in an OFDMA network and
gives a general distributed algorithm to solve it. Section III
describes the system model of a downlink OFDMA network
we are considering, and provides the closed-form formulas that
are necessary for the power control algorithm. An analysis
of the signaling load of the algorithm is given. In Section
IV we simulate the proposed algorithm in a 39 BSs dynamic
network simulator, and demonstrate the important resulting
gains. A method for managing the trade-off between cell-edge
user throughput and BCR is also given. Section V concludes
the paper.
II. PROBLEM STATEMENT AND PROPOSED ALGORITHM
A. Optimization Problem
We consider a downlink OFDMA network and an FTP
service with N
BS
BS. The bandwidth allocated to each cell
is divided into N
p
Physical Resource Block (PRB). For more
generality, PRBs are grouped in N
b
sub-bands, and the power
transmitted by a BS on two PRBs of the same sub-band is the
same. We introduce the following quantities: P
(b)
s
is the power
emitted by BS s on a PRB of band b, P
max
the maximum
transmit power on a PRB, and U
s
is the utility observed by s,
to be dened in the next section. The total network utility is
then U =

1sNBS
U
s
. For a given distribution of users in
the network, the BSs have to solve the optimization problem
described in (1), where g
l
, 1 l N
l
are convex functions
which represents constraints and will be addressed later. We
978-1-61284-231-8/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings
assume that we do not control the scheduling strategy.
maximize U (1)
subject to 0 P
(b)
s
P
max
, 1 s N
BS
, 1 b N
b
and g
l
((P
(b)
s
)
1bN
b
) 0 , 1 s N
BS
, 1 l N
l
Let us denote by P the subset of (R)
N
b
NBS
which satises
the constraints in (1), and P
s
the subset of R
N
b
which satises
the constraints relative to BS s. It is noted that P = P
1
...
P
NBS
is a product of convex sets, hence convex.
B. Requirements on the algorithm
We rst impose the choice of a distributed algorithm which
ts the at architecture of future radio access networks. At
each step of the algorithm, BS s observes its utility U
s
,
exchanges some information with its neighbors and modies
its transmit powers (P
(b)
s
)
1bN
b
accordingly. Furthermore,
it is noted that nding the global optimum in (1) is NP-
hard ([9]) in most cases, hence we are simply concerned with
nding a local maximum of U in a few iterations with minimal
computing effort.
C. Basic Algorithm
We use the approach introduced in [10] for solving a
constrained optimization problem in a distributed fashion. Let
(t) R
N
b
NBS
, t N denote the power allocation of the
network at time t, and (0) P. We can then apply the
following gradient descent algorithm:
(0) P , (t + 1) =
_
(t) +

U((t))
_
+
(2)
where [.]
+
denotes the projection on P with respect to the
euclidean norm, and a constant step size. It is noted that the
projection is well dened since P is convex.
Furthermore, since P is a product of convex sets, we have
that (2) can be implemented in a distributed way. Let
s
(t)
R
N
b
, t N denote the power allocation of BS s, at time t,
we then obtain the following algorithm, for 1 s N
BS
:

s
(0) P
s
,
s
(t + 1) =
_

s
(t) +

s
U(
s
(t))
_
+
(3)
where

s
is the gradient with respect to (P
(b)
s
)
1bN
b
.
Furthermore, [10](Proposition 3.8, Page 219) gives the
following convergence theorem:
Theorem 1. If we assume that P is a product of convex sets,
that U is bounded below and that

U is Lipschitz continuous,
then there exists
0
such that if 0 <
0
then (3) converges
to a local maximum of U in P.
III. MULTI-CELL OFDMA SYSTEM MODEL
A. SINR
We consider a multi cell OFDMA network, and an FTP ser-
vice. Users arrive randomly according to a Poisson process of
rate , with a le of a given size, and leave the network when
they have completed the transfer. It is noted that some users
might be rejected because of admission control mechanisms.
Let us consider a user i and a BS s. The signal from s received
by i is proportional to the power emitted by s, and we dene
h
s,i
the proportionality coefcient, which is the product of
path loss and shadowing:
h
s,i
=
A
(d
s,i
)

s,i
(4)
where d
s,i
is the distance between i and s,
s,i
= 10

1
+
2
20
with

1
and
2
are two independent normally distributed random
variables with mean 0 and variance

and A and are two


constants that depend on the environment.
Let s be the serving BS for user i and N
s
the neighboring
BSs of s. The mean SINR on a PRB in band b S
(b)
s,i
is
then calculated by summing the interference from neighboring
cells:
S
(b)
s,i
=
h
s,i
P
(b)
s
N
2
0
+

Ns
h
s

,i
P
(b)
s

(5)
with N
2
0
the thermal noise.
B. Proportional Fair (PF) scheduler
We will use the following notations: let r
(p)
i,tm
denote the
instantaneous bitrate of user i at time t
m
on PRB p, and r
i,tm
the average allocated bitrate to user i during [t
0
, t
m
]. Let
denote a small constant averaging parameter. We write T
(p)
tm
=
i if user i was scheduled for transmission on PRB p at time
t
m
. The average bitrate is then calculated by the following
low-pass lter:
r
i,tm+1
= (1 )r
i,tm
+
Np

p=1

i,T
(p)
t
m+1
r
(p)
i,t
m+1
(6)
where is Kroneckers delta.
The PF scheduler chooses the user for transmission on PRB
p at time t
m+1
according to the following rule:
T
(p)
t
m+1
= arg max
i
r
(p)
i,tm+1
r
i,tm
(7)
We denote by r
i
the limit of r
i,tm
when t
m
+ ,
0
+
if it exists. For a proof of convergence of the PF scheduler,
the reader can refer to [11], and to [12] for the more general
case of the -fair scheduler.
C. Scheduling gain
We assume a Raleigh fading model: r
(p)
i,t
m
= (S
(p)
i

(p)
i,t
m
)
where
(p)
i,tm
is an exponentially distributed random variable of
mean 1, with
(p)
i,t
m

(p

)
i,t
m
, p = p

,
(p)
i,t
m

(p)
i

,tm
, i = i

and

(p)
i,tm

(p)
i

,t
m

, m = m

. is a quality table which links a


channel state to the corresponding instantaneous bitrate and is
obtained by link-level simulation.
We rst dene which associates the SINR of a user on a
PRB of band b with his throughput on this band when he is
alone in the cell:
(S
(b)
s,i
) =
N
p
N
b
_
+
0
(xS
(b)
s,i
)e
x
dx =
N
p
N
b
S
(b)
s,i
L

_
1
S
(b)
s,i
_
(8)
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings
with L

the Laplace transform of . We can then calculate the


mean allocated throughput by the Round Robin (RR) scheduler
for user i:
r
i,RR
=
1
N
u
(s)
N
b

b=1

_
S
(b)
s,i
_
(9)
where N
u
(s) is the number of users present in s.
For the PF, the mean throughput can also be calculated in
closed form, see [13]:
r
i,PF
=
N
b

b=1
Nu(s)1

k=0
_
N
u
(s) 1
k
_
(1)
k
k + 1

_
S
(b)
s,i
k + 1
_
(10)
One must be careful however, since (10) is only exact when
the mean SINR of a user is the same on all PRBs, that is
S
(b)
s,i
= S
(b

)
s,i
, (b, b

, s, i), and becomes a lower bound for


r
i,PF
in other cases. A formal justication for this is given in
[14].
D. Form of utility and gradient calculation
We choose an -fair form of utility ([15]), with R
+
,
d > 0 a small constant, and f

(x) =
(x+d)
1
1
1
if = 1
and f
1
(x) = log(x + d) :
U
s
=
Nu(s)

i=1
f

(r
i
) (11)
We can now calculate the gradient of the network utility
with respect to the BSs power levels for both RR and PF
schedulers.
1) RR scheduler: We rst consider the derivative with
respect to the BSs own power level:
U
s
P
(b)
s
=
1
N
u
(s)
Nu(s)

i=1
1
(r
i,RR
+ d)

_
N
b

b=1
S
(b)
s,i
P
(b)
s,i

_
S
(b)
s,i
_
_
(12)
Now we consider the neighbors power level, if s
1
N
s
:
U
s
P
(b)
s1
=
1
N
u
(s)
Nu(s)

i=1
1
(r
i,RR
+ d)

_
N
b

b=1

h
s1,i
(S
(b)
s,i
)
2
h
s,i
P
(b)
s

_
S
(b)
s,i
_
_
(13)
2) PF scheduler: For a PF scheduler, the same type of
formulas can be obtained:
U
s
P
(b)
s
=
Nu(s)

i=1
1
(r
i,PF
+ d)

N
b

b=1
Nu(s)1

k=0
_
N
u
(s) 1
k
_
(1)
k
S
(b)
s,i
(k + 1)
2
P
(b)
s,i

_
S
(b)
s,i
k + 1
__
(14)
U
s
P
(b)
s
1
=
Nu(s)

i=1
1
(r
i,PF
+ d)

N
b

b=1
N
u(s)1

k=0
_
N
u
(s) 1
k
_
(1)
k+1
h
s1,i
(S
(b)
s,i
)
2
(k + 1)
2
h
s,i
P
(b)
s

_
S
(b)
s,i
k + 1
__
(15)
E. Constraints
We dene constraints on the maximal and minimal total
transmit power: g
1
((P
(b)
s
)
1bN
b
) =
Np
N
b

N
b
b=1
P
(b)
s
P
tot
and g
2
((P
(b)
s
)
1bN
b
) = P
tot

Np
N
b

N
b
b=1
P
(b)
s
where P
tot
is the maximum total transmit power and (0, 1] - the
minimum proportion of total transmit power. It is noted that
those functions are linear hence convex.
The constraint on the minimal transmit power has two
interests: rst, it prevents a numerical instability near 0 when
> 0, since the utility gradient becomes very large if a BS
transmits a total power of zero. The second interest is that
for close to 0, the unconstrained algorithm could result in
certain BSs transmitting very low power, causing a dramatic
increase in their load and BCR.
It is noted that xing a value of is akin to giving a
lower bound on the worst-case BCR. The justication is the
following: consider the case in which BS s transmits a total
power of P
tot
, and all its neighbors transmit at full power.
Then the BCR observed in BS s in this situation is an upper
bound for the BCR that could be observed in other situations
in BS s. Therefore, taking the maximum of this value on all
BSs gives an upper bound for the BCR observable on the
network.
Furthermore, increasing reduces the size of the constraints
set, reducing the maximum possible gains achievable by a
power control algorithm. This is why controls a trade-off
between BCR and Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC)
gains.
F. Implementation and signaling load
Every 1s, BS s calculates and forwards
Us
P
(b)
s
1
, 1 b N
b
to s
1
if s
1
is a neighbor of s. Hence, assuming N
b
= 3 bands,
6 neighbors for each BS and that each derivative is stored as
a 32-bits oating point number, the signaling load is of 576
bits/s per station, which is extremely small compared with the
expected capacity available on the X2 interface. Furthermore
the delay requirement of 1s is also easily satised, as a delay
between 20ms and 50ms is expected on the X2 interface.
IV. SIMULATION
A. Network Simulator
The algorithm is implemented in a large scale network
simulator with 39 BSs. The throughput allocated by the
scheduler is calculated in closed-form using equations (9) and
(10). Every 1s, the transmit power of each BS is adjusted
according to the power control algorithm described above. The
algorithm has been simulated for N
b
= 3. Three algorithms
are compared, using the following nomenclature:
Reuse 1 where all stations transmit at full power
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings
Soft Reuse which is a static power allocation described
in [16]
FFR which is the proposed dynamic algorithm
We choose = 2 since it implies maximizing the harmonic
throughput of BSs, which is a natural metric of capacity for
elastic trafc (see for example [17]) and gives good practical
results.
Because of the nite size of the network, we only calculate
the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on the subset of inner
BSs to minimize truncation effects, and the transient period
at the beginning of the simulation is not counted to calculate
KPIs. Simulation parameters are described in Table I.
Simulator parameters
Spatial resolution 25m 25m
Total simulated area 8km 8km
Time resolution 1s
Simulation time 3000s
User speed 5km/h
File size 10Mbytes
Number of sub-bands 3
Number of PRBs 9
Size of a PRB 180kHz
Number of stations 39
Cell layout 13 eNBs 3 sectors
5%
2
Maximum BS transmit power 30W
Service Type FTP
Scheduler Type Proportional Fair
Thermal noise 174dBm/Hz
Path loss 128 + 37.6 log
10
(d) dB, d in km
Shadowing standard deviation 6dB
TABLE I
MODEL PARAMETERS
B. Simulation results
All results are given for = 2, unless specied. Figures
1, 2 and 3 compare the BCR, mean le transfer time and
mean network throughput respectively for the three scenarios,
and we can see a clear improvement for the three KPIs.
The most notable is the BCR improvement from 5.5% to
2.3% in high trafc, demonstrating that the proposed algorithm
effectively reduces congestion in the network. Figure 4 shows
the cumulative distribution function (c.d.f) of the le transfer
time in the network for = 9, and we can see that all users
benet from the reduced congestion, the ones benetting the
most being cell-edge users, namely users with long transfer
times. Figure 5 shows the power allocated to each band
through time by the algorithm. Figure 6 shows the BCR and
the proportion of users whose File Transfer Time (FTT) is
longer than 10s as a function of , for = 0. It illustrates the
trade-off between the FTT reduction and increase in BCR.
Is allows the network operator to set the parameter in
order to enforce some policy, for example to obtain the best
performance while keeping the BCR under a certain threshold.
9 9.5 10 10.5 11 11.5 12
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Arrival Rate (mobiles/s)
B
l
o
c
k

C
a
l
l

R
a
t
e

(
%
)


Reuse 1
Soft Reuse
FFR
Fig. 1. BCR of the network, = 2
9 9.5 10 10.5 11 11.5 12
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
Arrival Rate (mobiles/s)
M
e
a
n

t
r
a
n
s
f
e
r

t
i
m
e

(
s
)


Reuse 1
Soft Reuse
FFR
Fig. 2. Mean FTT in the network, = 2
9 9.5 10 10.5 11 11.5 12
0.95
1
1.05
1.1
1.15
1.2
1.25
x 10
5
Arrival Rate (mobiles/s)
M
e
a
n

n
e
t
w
o
r
k

t
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
k
b
p
s
)


Reuse 1
Soft Reuse
FFR
Fig. 3. Mean network throughput, = 2
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings
0 20 40 60 80 100
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
Time (s)
F
i
l
e

t
r
a
n
s
f
e
r

t
i
m
e

c
.
d
.
f


Reuse 1
Soft Reuse
FFR
Fig. 4. c.d.f of FTT of all users in the network, = 2
0 200 400 600 800 1000
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
Time (s)
B
S

p
o
w
e
r

(
W
)


Band 1
Band 2
Band 3
Fig. 5. Transmit power of a BS, = 2
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Gamma(%)
B
C
R

a
n
d

F
T
T
(
%
)


BCR
FTT > 10
target BCR
Fig. 6. Trade-off between FTT and BCR for = 0
V. CONCLUSION
This work has presented a distributed SON algorithm for
interference coordination in OFDMA networks. The algorithm
uses information available from neighboring cells and closed
form formulas, making it both computationally light and
suitable for practical implementation. It has been applied
to a large-scale network simulator, showing important gains
over a full power allocation, for cell-edge users, while not
degrading other KPIs. The trade-off between gains for cell-
edge users and increase in the BCR has been shown, and a
straightforward method for the network operator to manage it
has been provided.
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