Subcarrier allocation in multi-hop orthogonal frequency division multiple access wireless networks

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been widely considered as a key technique for next generation mobile communication systems. Meanwhile, relaying technologies can improve users' quality of service, increase network capacity and enlarge cellular coverage at a low cost. In this paper, we focus on subcarrier allocation and utilization in multi-hop OFDM access (OFDMA) wireless networks, and propose two efficient subcarrier allocation schemes aiming to increase network throughput and subcarrier utilization. The first scheme selects suitable links for data transmission from base stations to terminals at the beginning. Then, interference-free links are included into the same group for network resource reuse. For the purpose of global optimization, we propose a Tabu-based searching algorithm as the second subcarrier allocation scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithms outperform other schemes in both network throughput and subcarrier utilization. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.