Unifying view on min-max fairness, max-min fairness, and utility optimization in cellular networks

This article is concerned with the control of quality of service (QoS) in wireless cellular networks utilizing linear receivers. The issues of fairness and total performance are investigated, which are measured by a utility function in the form of a weighted sum of link QoS. The common conjecture on incompatibility of min-max fairness and utility optimality by characterizing network classes in which both goals can be accomplished concurrently are disproved. Power and weight allocations achieving min-max fairness and utility optimality are characterized and it is shown that they correspond to saddle points of the utility function. The problem of the difference between min-max fairness and max-min fairness is addressed next. It is shown that in general there is a (fairness) gap between the performance achieved under min-max fairness and under max-min fairness. They characterize the network class for which both performance values coincide. Finally, they characterize the corresponding network subclass, in which both min-max fairness and max-min fairness are achievable by the same power allocation. Entnommen aus TEMA