Efficient and fair subchannel allocation based on auction algorithm

In multicarrier systems, the feedback information from a mobile station to a base station can be used to efficiently allocate the radio resource such as power and/or subchannels to a user. The quality of subchannel is measured by a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), whose range, in a real system, must be quantized because channel information should be represented as a finite number of bits due to signaling overhead. Therefore, some subchannels whose data rates are the same can exist even though the measured SNRs are different. In this paper, we propose an efficient and fair algorithm to allow users and subchannels to compete through bidding. The bidding price of each user is determined by the difference between the data rate of the best subchannel and the second best, where the highest bidder wins the use of the best subchannel. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has better performance than a random selection method in terms of throughput and fairness.