An efficient channel condition aware proportional fairness ressource allocation for powerline communications

Powerline communications (PLC) become a viable local area network (LAN) solution for in-home networks. We are witnessing a growing number of in-home devices and services using PLC systems. In this paper, the resource allocation problem with peak BER constraint is investigated in multiuser context. A new proportional fairness resource allocation algorithm which takes into account the channel conditions is proposed for the downlink. This algorithm is based on linear precoded OFDM (LP-OFDM) which enables reliable high bit rate transmission under peak BER constraint. The algorithm tries to maximize the overall throughput of the system under different users required bit rate constraints. Simulations are run over PLC channels and it is shown that proposed algorithms under peak BER constraint give better performance than classical proportional fairness algorithms. In addition, the linear precoding technique brings significant data rate gain and reduces the number of unsatisfied users.