Composite differential evolution aided channel allocation in OFDMA systems with proportional rate constraints

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) is a promising technique, which can provide high downlink capacity for the future wireless systems. The total capacity of OFDMA can be maximized by adaptively assigning subchannels to the user with the best gain for that subchannel, with power subsequently distributed by water-filling. In this paper, we propose the use of composite differential evolution (CoDE) algorithm to allocate the subchannels. The CoDE algorithm is population-based where a set of potential solutions evolves to approach a near-optimal solution for the problem under study. CoDE uses three trial vector generation strategies and three control parameter settings. It randomly combines them to generate trial vectors. In CoDE, three trial vectors are generated for each target vector unlike other differential evolution (DE) techniques where only a single trial vector is generated. Then the best one enters the next generation if it is better than its target vector. It is shown that the proposed method obtains higher sum capacities as compared to that obtained by previous works, with comparable computational complexity.