Resource allocation for OFDMA systems with multi-cell joint transmission

This paper considers the downlink resource allocation of a coordinated multi-cell cluster in OFDMA systems with universal frequency reuse. Multi-cell joint transmission is considered via zero-forcing precoding. Furthermore, joint optimization of the user selection and power allocation across multiple subchannels and multiple cells is studied. The objective is to maximize the weighted sum rate under per-base-station power constraints. Based on general duality theory, two iterative resource allocation algorithms are proposed and compared with the optimal solution, which requires an exhaustive search of all possible combinations of users over all subchannels. Simulation results show that the two proposed algorithms achieve a performance very close to the optimal, with much lower computational complexity. In addition, we show that joint user set selection across multiple subchannels significantly improves the system performance in terms of the weighted sum rate.