Uplink radio resource allocation in orthogonal frequency-division multiple access heterogeneous networks with limited feedback

Femtocell networks are expected to offer significant performance improvement with low cost. However, adaptive transmission based on maximising the sum rate of macro and femto networks requires perfect channel quality information (CQI) of the macro and femto links. This assumption requires an infinite resolution feedback link, which is not always practical since it requires an excessive amount of bandwidth. This study considers the problem of maximising average sum rate under the constraint of average maximum power transmission at macro and femto users. A suboptimal iterative algorithm is developed for finding the optimal CQI quantisers as well as the discrete power and rate at macro and femto transmitter for each quantised CQI level so as to maximise the average sum rate of the system. The author´s numerical results give the number of bits required to sufficiently represent the CQI to achieve almost the maximum sum rate attained using full knowledge of the CQI.