1Spectral and Energy Efficiency Trade-Off with Joint Power-Bandwidth Allocation in OFDMA Networks

Abstract—The design of next generation wireless networks is strongly motivated by the need to improve network energy efficiency (EE), while ensuring that the provided performance, often expressed in terms of spectral efficiency (SE), satisfies the vastly increasing user demands. In this context, this paper discusses about the SE-EE trade-off in Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) wireless networks, achieved by an optimal joint resource allocation of transmit power and bandwidth on the system downlink direction. A novel theoretical framework is presented initially for the study of a single cell scenario, where a traffic repartition scheme is proposed that simplifies the inherent optimization problem and reveals useful insights. Special attention is also given to the case of the low signal to noise ratio (SNR) and a way to easily evaluate the upper bound of EE in this regime is provided. Finally, by exploiting useful properties of stochastic geometry, this work is extended to a more challenging multi-cell environment, where interference is shown to play an essential role. For this reason, several potential interference reduction techniques are investigated in order to enhance the performance of the SE-EE trade-off curves. Index Terms—Green wireless networks, spectral and energy efficiency, power and bandwidth allocation, stochastic geometry. I