Capacity enhancement of a multi-user OFDM system using dynamic frequency allocation

A dynamic subcarrier allocation algorithm is developed and studied in order to improve the capacity of a multi-user OFDM system in the downlink environment. The proposed algorithm uses a decentralized approach and considers the instantaneous channel response of each user in parallel. In order to reduce the complexity of the system, the available subcarriers are divided into a number of partitions and the algorithm attempts to allocate the partition with the highest average channel gain to each user. However, situations may arise whereby two or more users attempt to select the same partition. As such, an important aspect of the algorithm is to resolve such conflicts. Based on the above allocation plan, adaptive modulation is employed for each user on the allocated partitions. The results obtained show that the proposed dynamic allocation scheme outperforms a static allocation scheme in terms of a lower BER and a higher system capacity for the same SNR. In addition, it is possible to obtain performance improvements at the expense of an increase in the system complexity by dividing the subcarriers into a larger number of partitions.