Utility-based joint power and rate allocation for downlink CDMA with blind multiuser detection

We treat utility-based joint power control and rate allocation in a downlink code division multiple access system, where either the matched-filter or the blind multiuser detection technique is employed at the mobile receivers. Rate allocation is performed on a per-frame basis; whereas within the frame, power control is performed at the symbol basis. A hierarchical rate allocation scheme is proposed, which together with the utility-based power control and the opportunistic fair scheduling scheme, maximizes the instantaneous weighted system throughput and the number of feasible users, and at the same time, guarantees the fairness among all users. In order to apply such a resource allocation framework to systems employing blind multiuser detection, we make use of the recent analytical results on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio performance of the blind multiuser detectors, assuming multiple spreading codes are used to realize multiple data rates. Our results show that under the utility-based joint power and rate allocation framework, the system capacity is significantly enhanced by using blind multiuser detection and the fairness can be well guaranteed.