Multiuser channel allocation algorithms achieving hard fairness

Multiple transmit antennas and dynamic channel resource allocation are targets of current research. A system that combines these two techniques can provide data transmission with very high spectral efficiency data transmission, and thereby meet the high-speed requirements of future generations of wireless networks. This paper investigates the performance of combined orthogonal channel and antenna allocation algorithms in multiple-antenna multi-channel systems. In [1] a Max-Min allocation algorithm is proposed for a N-user system with N parallel sub-channels. Here we extend this algorithm to the multiple-antenna systems and compare its performance in two different transmission scenarios (Spatial multiplexing and space time coding). The techniques are applicable, for instance, in MIMO systems using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple-Access (OFDMA) systems with dynamic sub-carrier allocation. We show that multiuser diversity, and thus an increase of aggregate data rates with the size of the user population, can still be successfully achieved even under a hard fairness constraint. Moreover multiple-antennas permit spatial multiplexing. The techniques considered here do not require phase information in the channel allocation process, which, from a practical point-of-view is particularly important for time-division duplex systems exploiting channel reciprocity.