Cross-Layer Design for OFDMA Wireless Systems With Heterogeneous Delay Requirements

Abstract — This paper proposes a cross-layer scheduling scheme for OFDMA wireless systems with heterogeneous delay requirements. We shall focus on the cross-layer design which takes into account both queueing theory and information theory in modeling the system dynamics. We propose a delay-sensitive cross-layer design, which determines the optimal subcarrier allo-cation and power allocation policies to maximize the total system throughput, subject to the individual user’s delay constraint and total base station transmit power constraint. The delay-sensitive power allocation was found to be multilevel water-filling in which urgent users have higher water-filling levels. The delay-sensitive subcarrier allocation strategy has linear complexity with respect to number of users and number of subcarriers. Simulation results show that substantial throughput gain is obtained while satisfying the delay constraints when the delay-sensitive jointly optimal power and subcarrier allocation policy is adopted. Index Terms — Delay-sensitive cross-layer scheduling, heteroge-neous applications, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), power control, subcarrier allocation. I