Energy-efficiency based resource allocation for the scalar broadcast channel

Until recently, link adaptation and resource allocation for communication system relied extensively on the spectral efficiency as an optimization criterion. With the emergence of the energy efficiency (EE) as a key system design criterion, resource allocation based on EE is becoming of great interest. In this paper, we propose an optimal EE-based resource allocation method for the scalar broadcast channel (BC-S). We introduce our EE framework, which includes an EE metric as well as a realistic power consumption model for the base station, and utilize this framework for formulating our EE-based optimization problem subject to a power as well as fairness constraints. We then prove the convexity of this problem and compare our EE-based resource allocation method against two other methods, i.e. one based on sum-rate and one based on fairness optimization. Results indicate that our method provides large EE improvement in comparison with the two other methods by significantly reducing the total consumed power. Moreover, they show that near-optimal EE and average fairness can be simultaneously achieved over the BC-S channel. © 2012 IEEE