Proportional Fair Resource Partition for LTE-Advanced Networks with Type I Relay Nodes

In 3GPP LTE-Advanced networks deployed with type I relay nodes (RNs), resource partition is required to support in-band relaying. This paper focuses on how to partition system resources in order to attain improved fairness and efficiency. We first formulate the generalized proportional fair (GPF) resource allocation problem to provide fairness for all users served by the evolved node B (eNB) and its subordinate RNs. Assuming traditional proportional fair scheduling is executed independently at the eNB and each RN to achieve local fairness, we propose the proportional fair resource partition algorithm to tackle the GPF problem and ensure global fairness. Through system level simulations, the proposed algorithm is evaluated and compared with both non-relaying and relaying systems with the fixed resource partition approach. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve a good trade-off between system throughput and fairness performance.